Golden Sun Redux: Tolbi Chapter
by Feonyx
Summary: At last Tolbi Redux is complete, with a Colosso that is just a little bit based on a few scenes from a movie not unlike Chapter Five: A Gallant's Tale. (Isaac kinda looks like Heath Ledger...)
1. Sail Away

Golden Sun Redux: Tolbi Chapter  
  
Something of a jump back here (naturally, since I started at the end of the game). Tolbi is the best I could come up with for this: I'll actually start on the ship and go right the way through to Colosso in this story, including Altmiller Cave on the way through (probably...) For those who think I've done something weird to the classes and Summons, please read two or three paragraphs of the notes at the beginning of my first Chapter/story (simply titled Golden Sun Redux), where it is all explained. Enjoy!  
  
  
  
"You are such a cheater, Isaac," said Garet as they waited to board the Tolbi-bound ship. The line was long, and they had been waiting for at least half an hour by now. Isaac, on the other hand, could care much less. He was currently holding one arm up, palm perfectly level, and staring at the Venus Djinni sitting there. The origin of that Djinni was what Garet was talking about.  
  
"Come on, Garet," said Mia. "He just picked a faster route." Standing in the noon sun for half an hour was certainly taking a toll on the Mercury Adept, who preferred much cooler temperatures. Mia without her massive, indestructible white cloak on and her hair down was something to be seen, if only for the rarity value.  
  
"Oh, yeah, you would side with him," Garet muttered, loudly enough for everyone to hear.  
  
"Why?" asked Mia, hoping that her slightest blush would be taken for a flush of anger.  
  
"I'm just saying that maybe it was... a less than heroic choice to blow up the landslide rocks instead of going around the other way. Besides, shouldn't we be trying to keep some balance? This is his sixth Venus Djinn!"  
  
"Be reasonable. We're taking a boat across the Karagol, and you think we should walk all the way back around the shore -to the place where we started- to get a Djinni?" said Ivan, stretching out his cloak to catch the wind.  
  
"Even one as powerful as me?" the Djinni added.  
  
"Sap, you stay out of this," Garet snapped.  
  
"I'm Ground."  
  
"How should I know? You all look the same!"  
  
"What's bugging you, Garet?" asked Isaac, as Ground hopped onto the recently-promoted Gallant's head to sun himself. Garet looked out at the Karagol, which flowed away from shore and over the horizon.  
  
"That!" he said, like someone explaining that the axe murderer in the basement made them nervous. Isaac followed Garet's viciously pointing hand with his eyes, out to the waves.  
  
"A thing of endless water at the edge of the world," said Isaac, reflectively. "Not quite, Garet."  
  
"It's pretty bloody close!"  
  
"He hasn't been this bad since the Mercury Lighthouse," Ivan whispered to Mia. She wasn't really listening; something seemed to be on her mind.  
  
"But... wait, Garet, how do you get clean if you hate water so much? A bath-" she continued, but Isaac snapped first. He sprinted ahead to the front of the line and demanded to be let on before he finished his dive into the abyss of insanity.  
  
"What's wrong with you?" the guy shouted, trying to pull away from Isaac's stone grip on his collar. He settled for just recoiling away from the apparent madman.  
  
Fortunately for all of them, Mia was a quick thinker. She stepped up beside Isaac and pulled him off the ticket guy. He looked relieved until Mia turned her gaze on him, as cold as an arctic sea.  
  
"Don't scare the man, Isaac," she said coolly, pushing him back while never taking her eyes off the ticket guy. "The mercenaries are here," she continued. "Where's the captain?"  
  
"Uh... guh... tickets?" he managed. Mia looking imperious was like having your soul cryogenically frozen.  
  
Still not looking away, Mia raised one hand and snapped her fingers. "Garet!" Garet appeared and took the stance of a noble bodyguard. "Tickets." At Mia's command he handed over the four cards, which he immediately snapped away and shoved at the man.  
  
"Guh... looks in order. Right, uh, up the plank... guh."  
  
"Thank you," said Mia, forcefully, and gave the man a strong impression that she was making a very detailed and indestructible note in the back of her mind. 'I won't forget this or anything else' was the impression that the ticket-taker got. After watching him for just a little too long to be normal, Mia walked up the plank and the other Adepts followed.  
  
On board, she kept on walking right to the other side, turned around, and hung her torso backwards over the hull.  
  
"I hate doing that," Mia commented.  
  
"I didn't know you could," said Garet in disbelief. "Bloody ice queen."  
  
"Since when are we mercenaries?" asked Ivan.  
  
"Well, we will be crossing some dangerous waters," Isaac began.  
  
"Since just now," Garet translated. "Ah well. Maybe I can keep my mind off the water if I'm watching... for... monsters..."  
  
"That come out of the sea?" suggested Isaac, brightly. "Mia, you okay?"  
  
"I'm landsick," she groaned from over the edge. She swung back upright. "Can we get moving? Where's the captain, anyway?"  
  
"Don't worry about it!" said an old man near the, uh, flat end of the boat. "Monsters, rough seas, nothing can stop us as long as we have the Anchor Charm!"  
  
"Have you been trafficking narcotics?!" demanded one of the ship's crew. He coughed. "Sir?" he added, carefully. Isaac studied the old man, and realised that his ancient face and white beard belied a tremendous strength. His arms bulged with muscles, but there was a frailty to him as well. This was the captain, and he had been sailing for decades.  
  
"That Charm has never failed me, Rick. All the years I've had it, my ship has never once had a fatal voyage. Now that's something you can count on!" The captain turned to leave.  
  
"Of course it hasn't," said another crewman. "You're still here, so there couldn't have been any wrecks unless you jumped ship beforehand." The other crewer leaned against the big pole thing in the middle and checked his nails in the most masculine way he could manage.  
  
"I would never-" began the captain angrily.  
  
"I didn't say you did," the crewman replied, making it clear that he sure as hell meant the captain would. The captain turned and left, followed by Rick.  
  
"Huh. Well, if that relic wants to take us out there to get killed, I'm not going. And neither's anyone else." He stood upright and started toward to the blunt end of the ship.  
  
"Ivan, tag him," said Isaac.  
  
"Why me?" protested Ivan.  
  
"Garet's ill, Mia's ill in reverse, and I have to talk to the captain. Go get bad dude," said Isaac, indicating the way the crewman had gone.  
  
"Figures always having to do the dirty work just because I'm younger and have unusual Psynergy not that it's useful in cases like this it won't exactly help to see invisible stuff when I'm chasing a guy who's really there..." Ivan stalked off surprisingly well, considering his size, and the grumbling followed.  
  
"Right then," said Isaac. "Time to get hired out."  
  
  
  
"I hate doing jobs like these I'm shorter than everyone else so they're way faster practically have to run to keep up with this sailor punk and he's trying to be inconspicuous..." Ivan suppressed the urge to ramble as he got closer to the crewman, who was leaning nonchalantly against the wall of the captain's cabin.  
  
As Ivan watched from around the corner of the building, the guy slid over a foot or so and screamed as quietly as he could. He leaned away from the rough wood, reached behind himself, and pulled a splinter the size of on of Ivan's fingers out of his back.  
  
The guy tried again, this time leaning slightly away from the wall before sliding. A minute or two later, he did it again, this time leaning back against the door to the captain's cabin. It swung open and he managed to get inside without falling over backwards.  
  
"Subtle," Ivan commented to himself, and resigned himself to waiting.  
  
  
  
"So we would be quite willing to help you out and guard the ship as long as we can get going soon. We're in something of a rush," Isaac explained to the captain.  
  
"Ah," said Ouranos, grinning. "Gonna try to get into Colosso, are you?" Isaac looked at him and tried desperately to keep the emotions from his face. This was actually pretty easy, since he wasn't sure whether he should laugh, cry, or just tear the guy down.  
  
"I wish," he decided on. "As it is, this is far more pressing than Colosso, and we need to get moving." Ouranos and his friend did laugh now, in disbelief.  
  
"More pressing than Colosso? It's only once a year, if that!"  
  
"Would you like there to be a next year?" asked Isaac, pleasantly.  
  
"Enough, enough. Ouranos, you and Sean have agreed to guard us on deck," said the captain. "Isaac, if you and your friends could stay down below and protect the rowers, we'll do fine. Besides, what can happen if... we've got..." The captain's voice trailed away like someone checking who they just ran into and looking up, and up, and up... "Where's the Anchor Charm?!"  
  
"I guess that explains that," Isaac whispered to himself, and he wondered where Ivan had got to.  
  
"Anchor Charm? Some little mystical trinket that wards off sharks or something?" scoffed Sean.  
  
"Give me a break. Let's set sail already, you can look for it when we reach Tolbi," added Ouranos.  
  
"I'll have you know that that Anchor..." Isaac shut them off. If that was what the crewman had been after, then Ivan should know where it was. All he had to do was find Ivan and they could get going.  
  
"Excuse me," said Isaac, and slipped out of the gathering argument.  
  
  
  
"So let's see... what else do you have to apologise for?" asked Garet rhetorically. He was leaning against a barrel above deck, looking at the sky thoughtfully.  
  
"This is one of those lessons about not misusing my powers, isn't it?" suggested the barrel.  
  
"Could be, could be. Mostly it's because I like revenge. Hey, how about that time in Alpine Crossing when you said we should break the rocks with my head, since nothing else on Earth was harder or thicker?"  
  
"I apologise most sincerely and profusely. You're going to pay for this in spades, Garet," said the barrel.  
  
"Ooh, that's going to cost you another half hour at the least. Hey, Isaac," he said, as the Earth Adept approached them at a run.  
  
"Hey, Garet. Have you seen Ivan anywhere?" asked Isaac, looking around distractedly.  
  
"Funny you should mention that," said Garet.  
  
"This is the last time I try to disguise myself," the barrel stated. "I figured, 'hey, who'll notice a barrel, even if it is following them?' And being smaller, I can actually get inside one of these things."  
  
"Getting out is apparently a different matter," Garet added.  
  
"Well get him out, Garet, or we'll never get to Tolbi at all. Ivan, did you see where that guy went?"  
  
"I can only guess what it is that he did, but yeah, he's just about the only thing I can see from in here. He went straight to the crow's nest and hasn't left since then," said Ivan, and the barrel wobbled a little. Garet had leapt up and was trying to pull Ivan out by sheer force, on the grounds that anything that got them away from the Karagol fast was a good thing.  
  
Eventually, with a sound like a silk cork, Garet managed to pull Ivan out of the barrel. By the time they were on their feet Isaac was halfway up the mast ladder. As he climbed, Isaac's level of disbelief rose, until he reached the top, where it maxed out.  
  
"Now really, when was the last time stealing helped anyone?" asked a soothing voice.  
  
"Well, I guess never..." said another, frail voice.  
  
"Exactly. And what if it actually protects people? You wouldn't want anyone to get hurt because of something you did, would you?"  
  
"No..." The voice was near tears now.  
  
"So, pull yourself together, and let's go down there right now and give that back to the captain before anything bad can happen. Oh, hi, Isaac."  
  
"Hi, Mia," Isaac responded, staring at the crewman. He was sitting against the edge of the crow's nest, opposite to Mia, staring at an anchor- shaped object in his hands and shaking with insecurity. "We'll be ready to go as soon as the captain gets his Anchor Charm back, wherever it is." Very carefully, Isaac didn't even come close to looking at the crewman and the charm.  
  
"Well, if you'll get out of the way so that this innocent man can get back to his vital job, I'm sure it'll turn up," Mia suggested, reaching out to Isaac. He took her hand, trying desperately to pretend that this was no big deal to him, and pulled himself up into the crow's nest. The crewman practically ran down the ladder and to the blunt end of the ship.  
  
"What did you do to him, anyway?"  
  
"I am a healer. We're supposed to be able to counsel people too."  
  
"Really? Do you think-"  
  
"Don't bother asking. Garet's hopeless." They looked out across the vast, beautiful Karagol, where the other shore was just a faint hint of a suggestion of darkness on the edge of the world. Isaac decided to go for it, and turned to Mia to say something charming and witty.  
  
"Whoa!" said Ground. "The view from up here is incredible! Sap, you've got to see this!"  
  
"Ground," said Isaac, "get off my head."  
  
"No way. This is too cool."  
  
"Do you ever get the feeling that the Djinn are the ones completing the quest and we're just hauling them around?" asked Isaac, but Mia had other concerns.  
  
"Hmm. I can see why you like it up here," said Sleet, who was reclining in Mia's hair. "Will you look at those waves?"  
  
"Hey! You two!" called Garet. "Get down here. We're ready to get moving!" Garet was out of date; at that moment the ship heaved away from the docks and onto the sea. They were on their way to Tolbi.  
  
"Heading set!" "Course clear!" "Row those oars!" "Monsters!"  
  
"It never fails..." muttered Isaac as he slid down the ladder and drew his claymore. 


	2. Watcher Of The Deep

****

Golden Sun Redux: Tolbi Chapter, Part Two

In truth, Isaac had expected much, much worse. The ship for Tolbi had been sailing for almost two full minutes and they had only been attacked by enough monsters to sink a ship. A bigger one. Close consideration of their adventures so far had given him a very pessimistic view of the Adepts' luck.

"It was probably the pepper," Isaac muttered to himself, swinging his claymore at a multi-tentacled thing trying to climb over the side of the ship. "Lucky Pepper my a-aaGH!" One of the things had just spewed a stream of burning fluid at Isaac, which quickly started corroding the ship's hull.

Around him the other Adepts were equally immersed in battle. Garet at least seemed to be enjoying himself, crushing the slithery things like soufflés under a wrecking ball. And that was just his boots. The bits left after a swing of Garet's great axe were so few and disgusting they couldn't even be called remains.

"What are these things?" yelled Ivan, whacking at one with more-or-less zero effectiveness.

"You think I know?!" Mia shouted back from an upper section of the deck. "They look sort of like cuttlefish, but… different from the ones in the waters near Imil."

"More possessed-by-vengeful-spirits than usual?" suggested Isaac.

"Cuttlefish," repeated Garet. "At last, irony that I actually find funny."

"Why's…" began Ivan. He watched in disbelief as Garet called out '_Unleash Scorch_!' and carved through one like a hot knife through sucker-covered butter. "…That?" he finished weakly, and ran for the edge.

"Poor guy," said Garet, moving to cover the Jupiter Adept. "Guess he can't handle the waves."

"Speaking of which," said Isaac, as he smashed the last one into oblivion and it greyed-out, "how come you can? Mars and Mercury is what I'm getting at."

"Yeah, but at least I have an outlet for it," said Garet, wiping off his boots. He and Isaac surveyed the deck appraisingly. "I think we did a pretty good job of that." A terrible scream rang up through the boards.

Isaac snapped toward Mia. "Weren't you covering the door?" Mia didn't even take the time to say 'I thought you were'. She simply vaulted the railing, landed gracefully, and charged through, down to the lower decks. The others followed quickly except for Ivan, who finished being sick and then followed as quickly as he dared.

From the rower's deck came shouts of 'Monsters!' and the various other stunningly obvious things that people tend to scream in a crisis, like 'Look out!' The Adepts charged in and tried to take stock of the situation, except that all of them were immediately knocked to the floor by people struggling to get out. All but Isaac, of course, who could be as immovable as a megalith when he wanted to.

"What's going on?" demanded Isaac of the guy who had run into him.

"Monsters came down from the upper decks, and they got André!" yelled the guy, getting up from the floor and trying to run for it.

"Why are you shouting? I'm right here."

"There are monsters! Man O' Wars!" the rower yelled.

"Ah. Best time to stay quiet, really. Here," Isaac said, taking his old Hunter's Sword out of his pack, "keep them from getting back out." He handed the rower the sword and moved on, the other Adepts just behind.

Several of the squid things from above deck were roaming down here, lashing their tentacles at anything that moved, or looked like it might, or was in their way, or wasn't in their way.

"I guess those would be the Man O' Wars," said Ivan. The warped creatures turned toward the sound of Ivan's voice and looked as menacing as rubbery hellspawn can look. They started to swell slightly, and spat more of the burning sludge.

"Oh, not this again!"

"_Unleash Granite!_" At Isaac's call the Venus Djinni sprang into motion, wrapping auras around the Adepts that deflected the acid. It ricocheted neatly off and into the wood of the hull, which started to corrode unpleasantly.

"Oh, well that's just PEACHY!" yelled Garet, smashing one of the Man O' Wars angrily. "We get to choose between burning and sinking." Perhaps hearing Garet, another one of the creatures did the expanding thing. With a resigned sigh, Isaac took a flying leap and tackled the thing. There was the hiss of dissolving armor and a scream of pain.

"Why does he always have to _do_ that?" demanded Mia in exasperation, and charged through to where her healing powers were going to be needed very soon.

'What is the sound of one warrior of Mars finding out that those squid beasts can also throw up vast quantities of immobilising goo' is not a Zen question, and has little chance of ever becoming one, but Ivan always thought he was probably unique in knowing that the answer is "Yecchh!" Garet struggled against the gelatinous bonds, but found that even his own considerable strength wasn't enough to break free of the planks.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, Ivan found himself alone in combat. If Garet couldn't wrench himself free then Gust wasn't likely to either, and Breeze wasn't any help here. Zephyr was good support, but not a solution on his own. Smog… Smog would stay in reserve until Ivan knew what to do with him. Which left Ivan's newest Djinni as the last option.

(Kite, what exactly is it that you're good at again?) asked Ivan, somewhere in his mind.

(I told you already. I can let you move so fast between two positions that you're as good as your own backup. Ready to try it?) asked the Jupiter Djinni.

"I'm not sure about this………" But the one thing he had learned for sure on the journey back fom Vale was that if he could trust any Djinni's judgment in battle, it was hers. "Here goes. _Unleash Kite!_" The Djinni's power flooded through him, and Ivan did a flip through the air on a sheer power high.

He realised a moment after landing that he had jumped in two different directions. His vision was blurry, like quickly flipping between two pages of a book. And he could clearly see the remaining Man O' Wars from two different angles.

Ivan smiled the smile of a Jupiter Adept with new power. (The closest equivalent in our world would be a thirteen year old boy who just woke up to find a tank on the front lawn.)

With a strangely reverberating voice, he raised a hand -or two- and called out "_Tornado!_"

Mia had just enough time to say 'Not in here!' before the room was a maelstrom of Jupiter power. The rowers and Adepts were all far enough away that they could avoid being pulled in, though the Ivans stood at the edge of the storm and felt the rush of wind with joy.

By the time the winds died down the Man O' Wars were long greyed. Ivan had gone back to being a single Adept, standing wild-eyed in the middle of a large space and breathing heavily.

"I've got a serious headache and I think I'm going to be sick again, but that was so cool," he said, exultantly.

"Yeah, and we really needed the pressure in here to change a lot as fast as possible, Ivan," said Mia, jumping up and rushing over to the most heavily burned part of the deck, where water was starting to seep in after the storm.

"Aw, hell no," said Garet, still trapped. "I've been to Mercury Lighthouse and the secret core of Sol Sanctum, I'm not going to drown in a boat in the middle of some place that isn't even an ocean."

"I'm not sure what we can do. There's no Mercury or Venus Psynergy I've ever heard of that lets you repair wood!"

"Wha 'bout both?" mumbled Isaac, now seriously regretting the tackling strategy. Mia's eyes went wide. Some people might have mistaken this as a revelation, but the Adepts knew Mia well enough to know that that was what she looked like when she couldn't believe she hadn't thought of that first. She snapped a hand out and grabbed Isaac's.

"Ground, switch over to me or you're going to spend the rest of your existence at the bottom of a lake." Power flickered, an arc of Psynergy from Isaac's hand to hers. Mia turned quickly back to the ever-weakening hull, searching her mind for the right Psynergy. "Ah. Here goes: _Growth!_" Sparks of Psynergy sprayed from her hand, and where they touched the wood it sprouted shoots that intertwined into a sort of watertight mesh.

There was a collective sigh of relief from the rowers, who the Adepts had completely forgotten about until now. "The captain is never going to believe this," said Kaja, in awe.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be helping Ouranos and Sean on deck?" asked Isaac, still in a thick mental haze but aware that something was wrong. Oddly enough, the feeling didn't go away when Kaja had said 'Oh, that's right,' and headed up the stairs.

The next few events happened so fast that no one was sure what the order was. Isaac wondered to himself "Why haven't we heard any sound from above decks in a while?" Kaja opened the cabin door and managed to call out before getting smashed back into the gathered passengers. And a terrible, wet roar sounded out from the top deck, shaking the cabins below.

"Well, naturally," said Garet, who was trying to pull his axe over with his feet so he could try to cut through the sludge, which had hardened quite a lot. Kaja ran back down the stairs.

"Kraken!" he shouted.

"Kraken?" repeated Isaac.

"Kraken," he confirmed fearfully.

"Kraken?" Ivan asked of Mia.

"Kraken," she explained, darkly.

Isaac staggered slightly as he pulled himself upright and cut Garet free. "Ground, back over here." The Psynergy arc occurred again, backwards. "Let's get up there before something serious happens to Sean and Ouranos."

"Something serious has happened, Isaac! A Kraken!" said Kaja.

"Monsters don't happen, Kaja. They just get in the way for a while." He headed up determinedly.

Garet shook his head. "Don't worry. He just gets like that on bad days. Let's break something, Isaac!" he called, and charged up after his friend.

"I…" said Ivan, "…am going to get back up there before I'm sick again."

"And I'm going to get back up there before either of those two do something stupid," said Mia, and whirled after them.

The Kraken was about as huge and ugly as Mia had said. It was like a Man O' War on a huge scale, with vast pink tentacles that reached over the edges of the ship and trailed lazily in the water. Well, most of them. One was wrapped around Ouranos, and the Kraken seemed to be observing the effects of ever-greater pressure around the warrior's lungs with its monstrous eyes.

"Drop him, you overgrown presashimi freak!" yelled Isaac, leaping over the railing to the upper section of the deck. The others surged up the stairs, and the Kraken threw Ouranos onto the lower deck, their presence having caught its attention.

"Plans?" asked Isaac, standing on guard against the monster.

"Why do you always charge in without a plan?" demanded Mia.

"Driven by emotion. Okay, here's the plan." They waited for a moment, ready for anything. "Rush it!"

"That's your plan?! _Unleash Gust!_" yelled Ivan, but despite his protest he followed.

"_Unleash Forge!_" "_Unleash Flint!_" "_Unleash Mist!_" Despite the extra power afforded by the flames of Forge, none of the Djinn were able to do much more than scar the hide of the monster an uglier shade of raw pink. By the time Isaac could deal with the concept of the thing getting any uglier, it had struck back.

It might have interested Ivan, if he had not been busy dodging it at the time, that ancient explorers had made considerable studies on the beasts known as Krakens. They had unusual hunting habits, certainly. For example, as Garet was experiencing at that moment, they had an unusual snapping movement that the end of a tentacle strike that flung the target into the air without sending it away from the Kraken.

The Spinning Beat, or so it was called, was of particular effectiveness when used repeatedly in a short period of time, especially against multiple foes (or, from the Kraken's perspective, meals).

"Shouldn't it be tiring out? The thing looks like it's trying to play the xylophone!" yelled Mia at the Kraken whipped viciously at the deck. A strike hit Isaac, who managed to roll away form the blow enough that it simply sent him sprawling.

Bending backwards over the railing painfully, Isaac still saw the tentacle ready to follow up on its first shot. He vaulted backwards, swinging around and hanging onto the rail. The tentacle stabbed outwards, straight as a spear, and the courage of Venus that Isaac still hadn't realised was not always a good thing kicked in. He reached up, grabbed the flailing arm, and when the Kraken retracted its tentacle Isaac came with it, blade first.

The Book of the Mariner, as the most authoritative of these studies is titled, has this to say about Krakens: "Under no circumstances, if one has no choice but to do battle with one of these Watchers of the Deep, should one come within close range of the beast. One should approach the situation with the attitude that one would rather blow one's self up with acidic dynamite fish heads than get within ten feet of the ancient monsters called Krakens. Especially if they are angry."

The reason for this became clear very quickly. His sword stuck in the beast, Isaac was immediately wrapped up by the tentacles. The Kraken's body, or perhaps head, leaned back slightly, exposing the vast beak-shaped mouth. Isaac had the distinct feeling it was about to eat him.

As if he would be that lucky. The Book of the Mariner also notes that Krakens naturally build up toxins in their blood. Possibly from eating every single thing that fits into their beak or can be broken into small enough pieces. And these pathogens are gathered, and refined into another weapon.

From the gaping maw of the creature came the Dark Blessing. It was a cloud of blackness, of death and plague. It sucked the light out of the air, and given a few more moments it would have sucked the life out of Isaac. Fortunately, Garet wasn't the type to let that kind of thing happen.

"_Unleash Fever!_" He couldn't see anything, but Isaac could hear Fever's psychotic laughter. The great axe emerged from the darkness surrounded by the power of Mars, and carved through the Kraken's tentacles. Isaac leapt away, landed badly on the lower deck, and spent some time trying to focus enough to cast Cure Well.

Garet rolled out of the cloud, stood, and was immediately smacked in the stomach by another vengeful tentacle. He flew into the wall of the ship, tried and failed to duck another arm, and ended up in a heap against a stack of barrels.

"Ouch!" said the barrel.

Garet's head snapped up, painfully. "Ivan?"

"What? No! …Who's Ivan?"

"Who are you?' Garet demanded, leaping to his feet. One of the Kraken's arms swept by, and he leaned out of the way without even thinking about it. Another flew, and he dodged the other way.

"Hey, not bad," commented the barrel. Red light flickered and a Mars Djinni appeared on Garet's shoulder, also staring into the barrel. Garet looked up.

"Hoo-ha! Garet, you know I'm all in favour of water-"

"Fever, you're a nutcase."

"-but don't you think we should be doing something really soon? Like before we sink?" Fever blinked in his unusual way, one eye after the other.

"If you think a Heat Wave will bring that thing down I'll be glad to try it, but somehow I think even you don't hallucinate that much," Garet said to the Djinni.

"A LITTLE HELP!?!" shouted Ivan from about ten feet above the planks of the deck. The Kraken was tossing him contemplatively between two tentacles.

"Duh," said Fever. "That's why we need this guy." He pointed with a foot towards the barrel. Garet didn't bother with disbelief or anything else. He simply took on an expression of complete resignation to whatever reality had in store, and yanked out of the barrel whatever was inside.

"Who are you?"

"Ember, Mars Djinni extrordinaire," it said. "You?"

"Garet, Mars Adept in serious need of a new ally."

"If I help you, will you take me as far away from this lake as physically possible and never make me look at a boat again?"

"Deal."

"**Ember Allies with Garet!**"

Garet was getting used to this feeling now, but it was still as exhilarating as the day he met Forge. Ember exploded in a fountain of fireballs that shot into the sky, trailing sparks. Then they came swirling down, flying into him as the very air flashed with red light. 

Garet turned to face the Kraken, and the power of Mars radiated from him so strongly that it actually seemed at a loss for roars. The Kraken lashed out with an arm, so straight and muscle-bound that it would likely have skewered an unprepared fighter.

"_Unleash Corona!_!" Instead it struck the Mars Psynergy shield and bent unpleasantly at a perfect right angle. "Heat Wave!" Not one to let opportunities pass by, Garet followed up with the fiery equivalent of a battering ram, which crashed into the Kraken and scorched it. (What do you do, anyway?)

(Me?) said Ember, inside his head. (I harness the awesome fires of passion to stoke your Psynergy into a raging conflagration of power!)

"I can tell you and I are going to get along well. _Unleash Ember!_" Some of Garet strength returned as the Djinni flew, but the part Garet was really looking forward to came next.

"TAKE COVER!" suggested Isaac.

"_Fire Power Rise! Garet Summons Tiamat!_" The words he spoke came from nowhere, as they always did when a new power made itself known, but Garet was very happy with the results. A tremendous creature crashed upon the deck, the queen of dragons. Around her burned flames of pure Psynergy, flames that did not consume the wood but still gave warmth and light. Her mouth opened and a great storm of flames burst forth, burning the Kraken until her flames grew so hot they turned white.

In a shower of sparks, Tiamat vanished. The Kraken in turn turned grey and disintegrated.

In the silence that followed, as the weight of the power expended feel upon Garet, Ivan commented "Sheesh. Not even enough time to get the breadcrumbs."

As the sun neared the horizon behind them, the ship and all its passengers reached the Tolbi Docks. Most of them were a bit annoyed but otherwise quite satisfied with the journey, except for the ones who had been forced to make up for injured rowers during the belowdecks battle.

"I still don't understand why you were hiding in a barrel," said Garet, leaning against the edge of the ship and watching people disembark. "I mean, stowing away so you could see more of the world, okay. And it's not your fault you ended up on a ferry instead of a trading ship either. But why stay?"

"Because getting off the ship would require getting close to the water, or at least going over it again. At least on deck I was well out of it," Ember explained.

"Right," said Ivan. "I take it all back, Garet. You just got stuck with an element that doesn't think ahead."

"I might point out that with Ember I now match you with Djinn, Jupiter Boy."

"I'm not worried yet, Garet. All I have to do is shove you over the edge and you'll be begging me to save you."

Mia turned to Isaac. "Aside from Imil, my experience with other people is rather limited. Are all males this competitive all the time?"

"Of course not," said Isaac. "I myself- yaaaAAAAGH!" There was a splash from far below, and Garet wandered away like he was competing in the Hundred-Metre Nonchalant Walk.

"Now that's what Ivan's talking about when he says you don't think ahead, Garet," said Mia, leaning backwards against the rail.

"What do you mean?" Instead of replying, Mia simply showed him, and vaulted back. A moment later there was another splash as she completed her graceful dive. Garet gave this due consideration. Then he grinned at Ivan.

"Come on, Jupiter Boy. We all have to face our fears some time."

"What are you doing down here?" asked Isaac, trying in vain to get his normally wild hair out of his eyes.

"I enjoy the atmosphere," Mia replied. "And the company." If he hadn't been busy freezing, Isaac would have blushed mightily. A moment later a scream came from over head. They looked up to see Garet and Ivan -clearly unwilling, since Garet had him in a headlock- hurtling down from above. Fever was on Garet's head, looking for all the world like a surfer.

"Wahoo! Let's do that again!" yelled Fever.

"You know what I think? I think he's permanently delirious," said Garet. He surveyed the water around him like he was trying not to think about it. "Well, this was obviously a good learning experience. Now let's get the hell out."

"Agreed. And then on to Tolbi," said Isaac.

"I don't know why," said Ivan, "but I'm getting a weird feeling about that place." The other Adepts considered the potential meaning behind a Jupiter Adept's predictions, and held him underwater until he took it back.

[Notes] Before I forget, credit goes to Terry Pratchett, the astonishing author of the Discworld books, for the Nonchalant Walk line. Further credit goes to Phoenix, commonly known here as Vilya, for playing the part of muse in this chapter and solving the italics/bold problem. No promises on what the next part will be, but expect it with my usual dismal punctuality. And if you like the series, look out for my Digimon fic coming soon…


	3. Crossing Paths

****

Golden Sun Redux: Tolbi Chapter, Part Three

The sun was almost set when the Adepts entered Tolbi, but inside the city you could hardly tell. The streets were filled with people and lit like the stars had fallen. Music was playing everywhere- as soon as one song faded into the distance, another one was within hearing.

"Song and dance!" moaned Garet. "When was the last time we ate, anyway?"

"What day is this?" asked Isaac, ducking under the swinging arm of a dancer as they made their way through the crowd.

"Thursday," Mia answered.

"This morning, then," Isaac said to Garet.

"Aaaagh!" said Garet, clutching at his stomach.

"All right, all right, we'll find some place to eat," said Isaac, shaking his head. The first stars of the evening were starting to appear, just faint points of light in a dark purple sky. One of his favourite times of the day. Staring upward at the stars, he noticed the slightest differences in colour between them. The noise and chaotic celebration around him faded away…

One that was slightest blue, glowing brightest of all for the moment. Another, perhaps with a tint of green to its twinkling halo, not too far away. And purple, and red, and faintest gold. Others were winking into visibility as the sun fell further behind the distant mountains. It was as though the entire universe was unfolding before him, and the closer he looked the farther he could see, across unimaginable distances, to the hearts of the stars…

"Heads up!" Garet, Ivan, and Mia ducked, along with the rest of the crowd. Isaac simply stared upward into the sky as the chair flew out a third-storey-apartment window, struck the wall on the other side of the alley, and fell on him. A ceramic bowl of fruit that was apparently much tougher than it looked followed the chair, but Garet caught this in mid air.

"Thanks," he called upwards, biting into a starfruit. From the window he could hear someone yelling 'Put that down!' "Do you want the chair back?" he added. A head appeared at the window, apparently holding someone away.

"Yeah," she said. "And the bowl, if you don't mind. You can keep the fruit, don't worry," she added, laughing. She stopped as Garet lifted the chair off Isaac and turned to face whoever was inside. "You psychopath!" She turned back. "Is your friend all right?"

"Oh yeah, rock-hard head," said Garet. "You're fine, right Isaac?" Isaac stood slowly and with some effort, then looked at Garet. He flinched back.

"Why are you so close?" he mumbled, more or less coherently and a little annoyed.

"I'm three feet away, Isaac," Garet replied.

"Rock hard head indeed. We should get him to the inn," said Mia.

"That'll never work," said the woman in the window. "They're all full during Colosso. Bring him up here."

Once Isaac was lying on her couch with an ice pack and Mia was checking to see if there were any other injuries that they couldn't see, Garet and Ivan asked the woman (whose name was Kelsey) about Colosso.

"You must be from a long way away!" she laughed, twirling a curl of hair. "Everyone knows Colosso. It's the biggest thing to happen in Tolbi. Every year, Lord Babi organises-"

"With a name like, um," said Garet, carefully, "Are you sure you don't mean 'Lady Babi'?" Kelsey laughed harder than ever.

"I should hope not! He's got to be over a hundred!" Garet stared for a moment, then pulled his hood over his face and tried to strangle himself with the clasp. "Oh, don't worry. You couldn't have known. Anyway, it's a big tournament. All the greatest warriors and strongest men compete in the Trials, and the winner gains tremendous fame and prestige."

"Whoever was hurling furniture out your window would be a good bet," said Ivan, grinning.

"You're not going to place a bet, are you?" said Kelsey, now looking quite severe. "I can't stand those people."

"Just a figure of speech," said Ivan, now several steps back from where he had been without having been seen to take them.

"Oh. Okay. No, that was my sister Morgan. She saw your friend -Isaac, wasn't it- and thought he was an old very _former_ boyfriend of hers," said Kelsey.

"That would take some effort. He comes from Vale, far to the north," said Ivan.

"Vale! You _are_ far from home. I've never heard of anyone who's been there."

"Until a couple of months ago, I had never been anywhere else," said Garet.

"And you came all this way for Colosso?"

"I wish," Garet replied. "We can't stay."

"Oh, surely nothing is that serious! Why not?"

"Fate 'f the w'rld," mumbled Isaac.

"What?" asked Kelsey.

"He said he, uh," said Ivan, starting quickly but trailing off, "whorled… wold… wood… would! He would like to, but we can't. Too bad, but there's no escaping some things."

"Like the Apocalypse," whispered Mia as she saw to Isaac, who would have smiled if he had been conscious enough to get the joke.

"Well, at least to make up for your friend getting crunched, let me let you stay here tonight. You'll never find any inn that isn't full to the roof," Kelsey pointed out.

Ivan opened his mouth to say something, but Garet was faster and threw an arm out to silence him. "Sure. That's a big help, thanks a lot." He was thinking of adding something like 'You're a very generous person' when Ivan grabbed his hand and shot a Look at him.

_Don't forget Jenna,_ Ivan thought into Garet's mind. Garet froze for a second, then sagged very slightly. Ivan grinned. _Of course, she's got to be more than a hundred miles away._ Garet turned and glared at him.

_Stop it, Ivan,_ he heard through the Mind Read.

_Well, really, she'd never-_

"Down in flames, you soggy little half-pint!" shouted Garet, and tackled Ivan. Kelsey, who had watched the entire exchange without a clue of what was going on, turned to Mia.

"Are they always like this?"

"Usually," said Mia, finishing her check and standing up. "I think we should probably just let him sleep for tonight. It's been a long day. Rough seas, too."

"You came across the Karagol! They say that there are monsters in the depths," said Kelsey.

"One or two," Mia agreed, collapsing with a sigh on the other couch.

When day came again, the world looked much the same as it had to Isaac the previous evening. The streets of Tolbi were still packed, many people were playing or singing songs against each other, and his head still hurt. He looked up, and saw Ivan looking out the window.

"You're up early," he commented.

"Technically I'm up late," Ivan replied. "Tolbi's on an interesting sort of plain; the sheer power of the wind refreshes me. Besides, this is so much further from home than I've ever been. It's amazing."

"Home," Isaac muttered. "Home has its advantages."

"You Venus people have no appreciation of wandering," Ivan replied, grinning.

"And you Jupiter people can't see something good when it's right in front of you," Isaac shot back, but he was grinning too.

"What on earth are you talking about?" asked Kelsey, walking through the apartment door. Isaac and Ivan spun around like the were competing for the Oscar for Most Suspicious Movements. Fortunately, Isaac could think very quickly when necessary too.

"Personality types. Very popular these days. Excellent for selecting workers," he said.

"Oh, that. Like how Mars types tend to be very aggressive?" said Kelsey. Garet entered just in time to hear this.

"Stereotypes," he growled. "I hear anyone say that, I'll crush them like insects."

"I hear death threats, the rest of you must be up," said Mia from a sofa. She tried to roll over and ended up on the floor. Isaac looked to Kelsey.

"This has been a big help. If there's any way we could repay you…" he offered.

"This was to repay _you_, remember? Oh, no, I suppose you wouldn't. Anyway, you haven't even had breakfast," Kelsey pointed out.

"Oh no, we don't have time. Got to get moving again," Isaac said.

"Mmph," Garet agreed, half another starfruit in his hand.

But when they reached the city gates again and shoved their way through the crowd, it was blocked by a pair of large oaken doors and a pair of equally large guards. Between them, either much smaller or simply less visible because of the way the gravitational fields of the other guards bent light, a third, older but equally gruff guard seemed to be offering an explanation.

"Get the hell off my foot! Hey! Get back, you savages!" Or at least, he might have under other circumstances. 

"This isn't good. What's going on?" demanded Garet, but only the other Adepts could hear him over the cacophony of the crowd.

"We'll never get anywhere like this. And I don't think there are any other gates in Tolbi," said Ivan. The others looked at him. "What? The wind doesn't get into the city any other way."

With a sigh and a shake of his head Isaac stepped forward and cast a minor Quake Psynergy into the ground, causing the entire crowd to stumble back at once.

"Why are there locked doors at a Tolbi gate?" he asked. 

The guard looked at him like he was insane. "There are _supposed_ to be doors at a city gate. That's what the gates are _for_."

"I meant more specifically _these_ doors. The ones that were, and I want to be clear on this, _open_ yesterday."

"Ah. We're, eh, having some trouble. Missing person. Ver' important, a missing person case. So we're locking the gates and searching the city. Won't take long, he can't get lost and wander out," said the guard smugly.

"And if he's already outside the city? He can't get back in," said Mia from behind Isaac, absolutely innocent and helpful. Isaac looked at her in wonder, remembering how she had got them onto the ship from the Kalay Docks. Her current expression would likely have melted anyone who really was like the Ice Queen role she had taken on before.

The guard looked at her in frozen astonishment for a moment, then said, "That's a good point, little girl." Still smiling, Mia stepped forward.

"Little girl? She's taller than me," muttered Isaac.

"It's in the expression," Mia whispered as she passed by him. "And I'm only taller with my hair like this. So," she said to the guard in a more normal voice, "you've clearly got the city secure, with competent authority figures posted to keep the people calm." What impressed Isaac most about this was that she said it with an absolutely straight face while a near-riot was taking place not two feet behind her back. If the guard had tried to look any more militaristically disciplined and skilled, he would probably have spontaneously generated a Shield of Tolbi on his forehead.

"Absolutely, miss!" he said, with a sort of authoritative clip to his voice.

"So now you need to send out some of those young, fiery recruits to search the area; get some real field experience." The guard nodded vigorously. "We'd be glad to help." More nodding that came to a sudden halt.

"You, miss?" asked the guard.

"Yes, me," Mia said, slight exasperation in her voice. "Don't worry, Garet, Ivan, and Isaac can protect me, I'm sure." The guard looked at them in a discerning, disapproving way.

"You, and you," he said at last, pointing at Isaac and Ivan. "I don't trust this guy, he stays inside the city," he added, nodding at Garet, whose eyes bulged with indignance.

_Don't worry about it_, said Ember from somewhere inside his head. _There are still things in Tolbi worth seeking._ The others stared a bit as Garet nodded at nothing.

"All right," he said. "You guys go find whoever's missing. I'll check out the city until you get back. Try not to take too long. None of this near-death stuff."

"Check out the _city_?" whispered Ivan. "And possibly Kel-" Someone watching Garet might have thought it was some kind of muscle spasm. He looked totally normal except for one foot, which shot out and hooked Ivan's leg, tripping him.

"No near-death stuff anywhere, thanks," said Isaac. He turned back to the older guard, who had lured several of the more gullible and impressionable young guards out of the guard house through the old and time-tested system of screaming 'Move it!' "Are we ready to go?"

"Yeah, get moving," said the senior guard. "And come back here to tell me if anything happens. Kids these days, don't know what they're doing, running around like they're going to save the world…" The screaming crowd had dispersed, either because they had heard what was going on and lost interest or their throats were tired from screaming and they had been set upon by beverage salesmen.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," said Isaac, not in the least hinting that he found the guard's comment amusing. "Come on, Mia. Ivan, let's move it."

When they were gone, Garet turned around and looked out at the city, its streets teeming with people and music, food and many other sorts of merchandise. "All right," said Garet, when he was sure no one would notice him talking to Ember, "what's so good about a big city?"

****

[Notes] After an exceptionally long time, Tolbi is back. I've decided to space things out a bit more -shorter chapters more frequently- in the hopes that more people will take notice and review. And that Vil won't go psycho, if that's possible (what 'that' is, I refuse to say on the grounds that it may doom me). Anyway, next chapter will cover Altmiller Cave, Hail, and Garet's showdown against probability, and it (along with the rest of Tolbi) will all be up before the end of the month, I hope. Of course, the more reviews, the faster it'll happen hint hint despite provincial exams.


	4. From Shadow To Shadow

**Golden Sun Redux – Tolbi Chapter**

**Part Four: From Shadow To Shadow**

                The lands north of Tolbi were more or less like those the Adepts had been travelling through for months now, though the climate was noticeably warmer, even in Isaac's opinion, a difference that was reflected in the trees and other plants.  There were still large grassy plains interspersed with forest, and the sorts of mountains that had always confused Isaac.

                Geology wasn't well known on Weyard, but a little bit of it was built into all Venus Adepts, and Isaac felt instinctively that if great bloody chunks of rock were going to stick out of the otherwise calm and orderly land, they had better have a reason, and none were apparent.

                There was indeed a reason, and while you may know it, Isaac would not learn the truth for many months, after the clash at Jupiter Lighthouse.  At that moment, the aftershocks of Alchemy being sealed away were not important.  The important thing is that Isaac was wondering yet again about mountains, and not paying much attention to anything else, with the very occasional exception of Mia, and even less often Ivan.  He went north, in the general direction of the closest mountains.  They followed.

                "I'm almost certain we were supposed to be following some sort of directions," said Ivan, still following Isaac's lead, but speaking to Mia.  "I mean, they may just be Tolbi guards, but they know what they're doing, and if everyone just wanders wherever they want, we can't be sure we haven't missed anything."

                Mia gave him a Look, shook her head briefly, and then simply looked at the Jupiter Adept.  "I think we can trust Isaac on this one," she replied.  "I mean, he may be a little clueless and waffle on decisions sometimes-" she glanced at Isaac, noticed that he hadn't even twitched, and went on "-but he's also pretty good at leading, certainly better than the rest of us, not to mention courageous."

                Isaac was very much in his own little world, Mia could tell, because she would have got at least some reaction to the waffling remark.  Isaac seemed to take any criticism from her very hard.

                "If I didn't know better, I'd think you liked him," said Ivan, grinning.

                "What makes you think I don't?" asked Mia, and laughed.  As they continued, Ivan looked very closely, but there was no trace of blush on Mia's face.  After a moment, without looking in his direction, Mia said to Ivan, "You wouldn't be thinking of reading my mind, would you?"

                "I might, but apparently you're pretty well armed in that field yourself," said Ivan, discreetly sliding his hand back into his pocket.  "Gifts of Jupiter indeed."

                They walked onward, getting closer to the mountains all the time.  In the distance behind them, Ivan could occasionally see Tolbi guards patrolling and searching the hills.  Isaac was still silent, once again drawn into his head, puzzling over the whole idea of mountains for the hundredth time in his life.  Just when it was getting to be unnerving again, Mia spoke up.

                "What was that?" she asked sharply, sweeping the area around them with her eyes.  Isaac snapped out of his reverie at her exclamation, but had no answer- he hadn't felt or heard anything, and everything looked normal.

                Ivan, on the other hand, had pulled his arms a little further into his robes.  "Brr.  That was... weird.  Sort of like wind in midwinter, but without the wind, wasn't it?"

                "I didn't notice anything," Isaac replied, at a total loss.  "Mia?  What was it?"

                "I don't know either.  But it wasn't anything normal.  Sort of refreshing, really.  Soothing…"  She sighed in a relaxed way.  Ivan stared in disbelief for a moment, wondering how anyone could have enjoyed that, but before he could say anything, Mia's eyes snapped wide open and Sleet appeared on her head.

                "One of these days I'm going to sew a mousetrap into a hat and get rid of their obsession," said Isaac, watching Sleet's appearance bemusedly.

                "Djinni," Mia realised, snatching Sleet off her head.  "Could it have been one?"

                "Hard to say," Sleet replied in a definitive tone of voice.  They all waited in silence for a moment, and then he realised with a little start that they were waiting for more of an answer.  "Well, it certainly felt like Mercury Psynergy, but such a short pulse in a very small area means that, if it was, it could have come from just about anywhere between here and Angara."

                "Can't you do something to find out where it is?" asked Mia.

                "More Djinn…" muttered Ivan.

                "What about us?" asked Flint.

                "Yeah, what about-" Gust realised that he had just backed up a Venus Djinni, and quickly backpedalled.  "I mean … what about … the other Djinn … and ourselves?"  He returned Ivan's strange look for a few moments, and then broke down.  "Yes, yes, all right, 'what about us'?"

                "Elementally-biased weirdo," muttered Flint.

                "Arrogant gloating boaster," said Gust in much the same tone.

                "No, he can't do anything to find it," said Fizz, appearing near Mia's feet.  "But there _are_ four of us, and _we_ can do something about it.  Get Mist and Spritz out here."

                "We're supposed to be looking for a missing person," Isaac pointed out.

                "But even more so we're supposed to be saving the world, which means we need all the power of the elements we can gather if we're going to take on Saturos and Menardi again," said Mia.

                "But if we're going to get Garet out of Tolbi, we also need to get some sanity back into that city, which means we need to find this apparently important guy," Ivan retorted.

                "Y'know," said Isaac, in the sort of calm voice that was his standard –he probably didn't even see the argument they had been heading for- "there _are three of us.  Ivan, you and I can keep going, Mia and the Mercury Djinn can find out where that little wave came from, whatever it was.  I didn't feel a thing."_

                "You're neutral to Mercury-" Flint scoffed quietly at this "-while I'm vulnerable to it and Mia… is insane."

                Mia glared at him a little.  "I resent that."

                "You resent accurate observations?" asked Spritz.

                "Remember whose head you're sleeping in," she warned with a grin.

                "I do.  No one's.  Djinn don't sleep."

                "Nor eat or any number of other things, so you've said, but you _do_ make up for it by spending all your free time and some of your less-free time talking incessantly," said Isaac.  "Are we going or not?"

                "Sure.  Just to get away from all these blue Djinn," agreed Ivan.

                "I'll catch up with you on the way back to Tolbi," said Mia, and set off toward a good hilltop.  They watched her go for a moment, then started to turn back, deciding where to look.

                "There is the weirdest thing up ahead in that mountainside," announced Granite, appearing with a few sparks.  Isaac and Ivan both considered the Venus elemental spirit that had just flickered out of some ethereal other-plane and onto Isaac's head, where his hair was slowly taking on the role of a sofa.  And this particular elemental spirit had joined them in the backyard of a village full of people-turned trees, where it had made the rickety fence a totally insurmountable barrier by means of a Psynergy wall.

                "Must be pretty dang weird," said Isaac after a moment's pause.  "Show us."

                "Didn't you say there was something good in here?" asked Garet yet again.  Ember was starting to get annoyed.  She had known her share of Adepts over the years, but usually older ones, wiser ones, and above all, ones who didn't repeat the same bloody question every three minutes.

                "Yes, thank you.  I've lived in this city for a considerable length of time," Ember replied.  "I do know what's in here, and it could be useful.  You carry two very interesting things with you, Garet."

                "What?  Oh, nah, Isaac's got the Mars St-"

                "Do not speak such things in a crowd, you don't know who may hear you," hissed the Mars Djinni, who was still hiding in the depths of Garet's mind.

                "If there's a single person in this city who knows what Psynergy is, I'll cook all the group's meals for a week," Garet offered.  "Besides, what do you mean by 'a considerable length of time'?  The seal in the Star Chamber was only opened a couple of months ago.  You couldn't have been here even that long."

                "Long enough for my tastes, surrounded by non-Adepts.  But that doesn't mean I didn't learn a few things about the city.  Tolbi hides secrets you don't know.  I shall teach you," stated Ember.

                "Great.  Good.  Where?" asked Garet, gesturing at the wide city in front of them.  Garet (and, in a manner of speaking, Ember) stood at the top of a rise, in a sort of town square that overlooked most of Tolbi.  The city was vast for Weyard, houses and other buildings stretched into the middle distance.

                "Behind you," said Ember, and Garet could have sworn she laughed.  Garet turned on the pale grey cobblestones and faced a large pool backing on a wall from which a massive dragonshead fountain poured sapphire-blue water.

                "You _would find some way of getting water into this," grumbled Garet._

                "Water?" repeated Fever, excitedly, and sparked into existence, leaping into the fountain's pool with a splash.  "Oh, I've been deathly dry ever since Fuchin Falls … not counting when we jumped into the Karagol … this is more like it."

                "Get out of there, you little deluded maniac!" demanded Garet, in a strange voice that was both whisper and roar.  "You're going to be seen, and I don't want to try to explain what Djinn are right now."

                "Oohhh," whined Fever as Garet fished him out rather forcefully.  Garet noted without much surprise that the Mars Djinni didn't drip at all, and was just as dry now as he would have been in the Lamakan; a little reminder that he was currently holding a fragment of the Mars Spirit's power, which meant that it would be good to get the psychopath out of sight very quickly-

                "Nice kitty," said a voice by his ankle.  Garet froze, then looked down and saw a girl, perhaps four years old, looking up at Fever, who was just out of her reach.  He looked around, and saw that no one else had taken an interest in the Djinni.  

The girl's mother and father were nearby, sitting on a bench, asleep in the sun.  The girl was, if not so quick on the uptake involving the fundamental differences between cats and Mars Djinn, very clever, since her sleeping father now had his arm securely placed around a small barrel of corn.  Looking further, Garet noticed a small gap on the vegetable stall right beside the bench.

Garet thought at speeds he rarely attained even in the thick of lethal combat.  "Yes," he agreed, slowly but wholeheartedly.  "Very nice kitty.  Would you like to play with him?"

"You backstabber!" raged Fever quietly.  "Let me back in the fountain!"

"Sure!" agreed the girl, wide-eyed.

"Here.  You just bring the kitty back with you and stay on that bench with your parents, all right?"  Fever struggled in his grip, and an unusually cautious thought occurred to him.  He raised Fever back up to eye level.  "Don't you dare think of doing a thing to her to get away, Fever."

"If you let me back in the water, there's no danger anyway-"

"Don't do a thing to her, Fever, I conjure you!" growled Garet between tightly clenched teeth.

Fever stopped struggling.  "I'll make Mia pay for telling you about that."

Satisfied that the arcane phrase had worked -Djinn put a lot of store by such things, and in any case there might have been a sort of Psynergy behind the words- and there was no danger to the very small girl, Garet placed Fever into her eager hands and watched her rush back to the bench.  He turned to the fountain again.

"Okay, what does this do and how do I make it do it?"

Mia and her four Djinn reached the crest of a high hill, and looked out across the late morning plain.  Another thrill of Mercury power ran through them, and they shared a relaxed sigh.

"Where did that come from?" asked Mia, looked to the Djinn.

"Hard to say for sure," said Mist.

"I think we should triangulate," said Fizz.

"Why do you always try to solve every problem with triangles?  It's like it's the only thing you can think of.  Triangles, triangles, triangles," said Sleet.

"That's because I'm a healer, not an uncouth fighter," countered Fizz.

"Triangles have combat use," Spritz pointed out.  "Arrows, for example."  The other three stared at her.  The wind blew nearly silently, and no one moved for a moment.

"Whatever, I liked that sound of that one," said Mia, and the Djinn broke out of their trance.  With various comments on the lines of 'Right' and 'Good plan', the Djinn took positions around the hilltop and waited.  After a full minute's silence, Mia coughed quietly and started to say "Fizz-"

"Quiet!" hissed the Djinni.  "This takes concentration-"  Fizz was silenced by a trio of hushing sounds from the other Djinn, and they waited in further silence.  Eventually, there was another ripple of Mercury energy, and lights flashed between the Djinn, practically ricocheting from one to another with a strange sort of splashing sound, crossing with a quiet toll of a bell.  Then it stopped in an instant, and they all turned to face roughly northwest.

"There," said Fizz.

"That's it," agreed Sleet.

"Got it," Mist reported.

"That way," finished Spritz.  The Djinn looked at Mia with satisfied expressions.  She looked back blankly.  Spritz sighed.  "It took some concentration, but we've figured the direction to go if you want to find out where these waves are coming from."

"Of course I do.  Let's go," said Mia.  She took a few determined steps before turning back.  "Um… you'll have to lead."

"That's more like it.  I could get used to Adepts answering to Djinn," Mist said, marching ahead.

"This is weird?  Granite, it's a cave," Isaac said, gently.

"You can't feel that?" asked the Djinn, a little surprised.  "I guess you guys really aren't all that attuned to Psynergy yet.  There's something that doesn't feel at all right inside there somewhere.  Whenever I try to focus on it, it slips away."

"Like when Mia attempted spaghetti.  I hesitate to say 'made'," Ivan clarified.

"We're here because we're warriors, not because we can cook," Isaac stated.

"Just promise me we'll never let Garet make food," asked the Jupiter Adept.

"I would if I could.  Okay, Granite, show us the way in," said Isaac, and the Venus Djinni stepped off his head, hopping from rock to rock until they reached the relatively smooth ground inside the cave, at which point Granite started the Venus-Djinni-walk that Isaac always tried to avoid thinking of as waddling.

Isaac and Ivan walked into the cave with the sort of fearlessness that comes from battling Krakens as a part of the job.  But after a few minutes, when Isaac tripped and fell flat on his face, Ivan realised that the cave was exceptionally dark inside.  Much darker than any other cave they had been in.

It was true enough that caves got dark inside.  They were very nearly famous for it.  But with occasional torches, which were crafted very well by expert torch-sages (or so Ivan figured it had to be) so that they could last for ages without going out, most underground paths weren't hard to follow.  Inside Altmiller, the darkness was merely warded off by torches, and after about ten feet, it gathered in hordes, plunging the Adepts into absolute blackness.

"Well, this is just fantastic," grumbled Isaac, rubbing his battered shin with a sore hand.  "Why is it so dark?"

"This is a cave we're talking about," Ivan replied, but he knew what Isaac meant.  It was like being in a vast ocean of shadows, with bubbles of light here and there.  "The air doesn't feel right."

"Sort of…  It sort of feels the way sand tastes…" mumbled Isaac.

"Venus Adept weirdoes," Ivan said in much the same tone of voice.

"If it's just the two of us in here, I think we should try to avoid elemental enmity," the Venus Adept suggested.

"Meaning I don't get to make comments like 'sandstone brain'?" asked Ivan innocently.

"Right.  And I don't get to crush the life out of you with a big rock."

"I _like_ this plan."

"Any suggestions as to how we deal with the _terra indistinctica?"_

"If you mean the shadows, I don't know."

"Djinn can see in the dark," Vine volunteered.

"I am _so_ not coming out there until we're aboveground," stated Gust.

"We might bring a torch with us," Ivan suggested, "but I have the feeling it wouldn't quite work like that.  These shadows are really… intense."  As little as he liked intense heat, Ivan found himself backing towards the only visible torch.  The darkness had _attitude._

"I _said_, Djinn can see in the dark.  Well, not exactly _see_, we don't usually _see_, _per se, but the principle of the idea is the same-"_

"I figured you were bragging," said Isaac.  "How does your sight help us?"

"Well… you could hold onto my tail, and Ivan could hold onto you, and then… what are we doing in here, anyway?" asked Vine.

"That's odd…  I felt sure I ought to abhor this infernal place more…" muttered Zephyr.

"I know what you mean," said Smog.  "How odd."

"Not at all," said Kite, and as near as Ivan could read expressions on Djinn, she was smiling.  "One of us is in here.  There's a Jupiter Djinni in this cave."

"A brother trapped in the still earth?" said Breeze, horrified.

"Sister," Kite corrected.  "Deep down, though.  I can't quite hear her thoughts…"

"What do you mean, 'still earth'?  Continents move, you know," said Sap.

"Are you out of your mind?  What could move a continent?" asked Gust.

"Certainly not the wind," Flint commented, and although it was quiet, the words echoed for a few moments.  The silence that followed was a close personal friend of the darkness, had in fact grown up in the same neighbourhood as the darkness, and was about as comfortable, but quieter.

"I think," said Zephyr, in a voice that contrived to be both hot and icy, "that we should go deeper and find our fellow Jupiter Djinni."

"Fellow Djinni," Quartz corrected her, very firmly.  "I don't mind a little competition, but we are all Djinn, none stronger or weaker than any other.  If we insist on this sort of pointless hostility, the entire world is in terrible danger."  There was another silence, this time rather embarrassed.

"I guess we should start moving, if we're going to save a Djinni," said Granite.  Smog looked a little surprised at this, and coughed, which was a dead giveaway, because Djinn don't cough, as a result of not breathing, either.

"Yeah, we should," he agreed.  "Um…  We'll scout ahead, you guys can lead the Adepts around any tough terrain."  This suggestion was accepted by the other ten, oh, and of course the Adepts themselves, who agreed to follow Vine and Sap through the darkness.

"Once again I feel like the Djinn are the heroes here, and we're just tagging along because it's awkward for them to do things like use the Catch Beads," said Isaac.

"No hands," Vine added, matter-of-factly.

Sleet led Mia quickly over the plains, hiding behind rocks and in thick clumps of grass whenever they encountered Tolbi guards searching for Lord Babi.  The hills were alive with the sound of "My lord?  Are you there?  Lord Babi?" and similar calls.  Mia vaguely wondered what would happen if one of them called 'are you there' and was told 'no'.  She rather suspected the guard in question would keep walking.

"This feels right," said Sleet after an exceptionally long run.  They were at the top of a hill, and Tolbi was just barely visible in the distance.  It was just past noon, the high sun was making its presence known in the form of penetrating heat, like a celestial blast furnace, and there were no Mercury Djinn to be seen, aside from Sleet.

"There's a Djinni around here?" asked Mia, doubtfully.

"The Psynergy does not lie," stated Sleet.

"This is so unfair," Mia muttered, shading her eyes.  "Too much clothing is roasting hot, and any less means you get sunburnt.  What a twisted climate.  …Sleet?"

"Yes?"

"How are we going to find a Mercury Djinni like this?  Even Fizz and the others don't want to be out in this heat.  Any wild Djinni would be hiding."

"Beats me.  Keep still and try to feel cool and shady," said Sleet, who rather wished he could get out of the heat too.  The last remark had been meant as a weak, heat-wracked sort of humour, but Mia slapped her forehead and laughed.

"Of course!  That should have occurred to me already," said the healer.

"I think _you_ should probably find some shade first, Mia," Sleet suggested, soothingly.

"Oh, stop it, I'm thinking just fine."  She reached into a robe pocket and pulled out a strange stone, made of a sort of blue glass that looked very much like a large raindrop frozen in time.  The Douse Drop sparkled in the sun, and then gained an inner glow from Mia's Psynergy.  She raised her other hand, with the Angelic Ankh in it, and called out "_Douse!"_

The Ankh charged with blue light for a moment, and then it fountained upwards, exploding like a firework and turning into a very small, concentrated downpour.  The dry, sun-scorched ground sucked in water better than a sponge, and while it was refreshing, Mia decided to spend a bit of time giving succour to (which, as far as she knew, meant flooding) the surrounding grass.

Every few moments, Mia turned and focused on a clump of tall grass, a bush, or a rock, blasting it with water in hopes of catching this Djinni off guard.  What she didn't expect was a sudden crescendo of footsteps, followed by a leap onto and off of her head, ending with a Mercury Djinni flying through the air.

She was a different one, not one of Mia's four, though how the healer could know this (the new one looked exactly like the others) was difficult to explain to anyone who had never been allied with a Djinni.  Sleet had retreated, meaning all four of Mia's Djinn were in the ether of her mind, while this fifth one had rushed into the Douse stream and was now jumping happily in the focused rain, catching drops with what Mia had always sort of thought was the Djinni's mouth.

"Oh, thank Mercury, water at last, it's baking out here, I was starting to think I was going to shrivel up and disintegrate, Spirits be praised-" the Djinni went on for some time, dancing as only a creature with feet but no legs can.

"Fizz, Sleet, Spritz, I want you standing by," Mia whispered, not moving.  She waited for the three replies of 'ready', took a steadying breath, cut off the Douse Psynergy, and ran.

The Djinni turned to see the charging healer just moments before the staff came around.  Those moments, (un)fortunately, were enough for Hail, who didn't feel like being interrupted just now.

"_Prism!_"  A rough block of ice materialised from Mercury Psynergy and smashed into Mia, throwing her to the ground, and Hail took up the offensive, running toward the top of the hill.  Mia rolled to a stop, quite dizzy, very cold and even more annoyed, and saw Hail focusing power.

"_Ice Horn!_" she called, raining frozen shards onto the crest, but they didn't seem to do much more than annoy Hail.  Wishing she had left Sleet set, since Mist couldn't strike from a distance, Mia leapt up and started toward the Mercury Djinni.

A whole new reason that high ground was useful became apparent to Mia just as she reached the top, which was that when Hail cast Froth Sphere it had gravity on its side, the rush of whitewater blasting her back down, along with most of the grass (which was easily freed from the sandy, dry earth).

"I think we need a new plan," said Fizz.  "One that involves less tumbling and nearly drowning on a dry plain.  Possibly with our help."

"You've got a good point," said Mia.  She ducked as another Prism shot overhead and shattered against the ground below.  "Time for some spiritual guidance."

"I love this part," said Spritz as clouds rolled across the sun, darkening the day.

"_Water Power Rise!  Mia Summons Nereid!_"

A minor flood rose up from the ground itself, and from nowhere -though it felt like a nowhere that was nevertheless very far away- a giant turtle surfed the waves, a great aqua-green behemoth with a shell that could repel an avalanche.  On its back was the princess of the sea, the water spirit Nereid, and her eyes were as deep as the ocean.  She drew her fan from her robes and snapped it open with a sound like quiet thunder, though it was as simple and threatening as the reloading of a shotgun.

Hail seemed hypnotized by the motions of the fan, which was pointed at her, palm down.  Nereid's wrist twisted, the fan flipped to face up, and the water couldn't help but follow.  It was a massive burst, like a wet volcano, as the sudden inundation exploded toward the sky beneath the Djinni.

At last all the water rose, like inverted rain, and disappeared into the sky.  Hail looked stunned for a moment, then shook her head.  "That was flippin' _wet," she stated._

"_Unleash Mist!_"  As much as she enjoyed the spectacle of summoning, Mia also knew that Mercury was ineffective against Mercury, and had taken the free time to climb unseen up beside the Djinni.  Hail looked up and saw a Djinni-powered Ankh heading for her, and with her last conscious moment, said something they'd all regret.

"_Drench!_"  Mist struck a second later, and Hail fell into a Psynergy-induced sleep, but her own attack had already begun.  Mia had made the mistake of standing on the side of the hill that had already been scoured of grass, meaning that what ended up at the bottom of the hill was essentially a sleeping Hail, a dirty Mia, and a great deal of mud.

"This is unreal," she said, thankful that she had kept her head above the level of the mudslide.

"Don't try cleaning it off with Psynergy, you're tired enough already," warned Fizz.

"What's your suggestion, then?"

"Get back to Tolbi."

"Figures."

Garet had one eye closed, his tongue was sticking out, and he had not just woken up.  This was an odd combination, but explained slightly by the large gold coin in his hand.  People have strange beliefs about what might improve their aim.

It had been startling when the water had drained from the spring at the flick of a lever.  It had been surprising when Ember had explained exactly what he was supposed to do with the Lucky Medals and the massive rings on the fountain's bottom.  It had been mortally terrifying when the dragon head had stretched out for him, and rather odd, almost anticlimactic, when it dropped an Earth Shield at his feet.  Another roll had given him Spirit Armor.

"That was a pretty good shot," Ember said, critically.  "A little more flick and it should roll better, though.  You're still putting too much arm into the motion.  Just the thumb and a little wrist."

"How do you know, anyway?"

"Watching this is one of the more interesting things to do when you can't let people see you."

"I see."  Garet flipped another Lucky Medal, and it rolled around for a few moments before being stepped on by one of the turtles, who were enjoying the extra sunlight.

"That one sucked," said Ember, carelessly.  A bag of black fabric was deposited at Garet's feet.

"Oh, now it's taunting me.  I'll show you!" he shouted, drawing a stare or two, and then flung the last Lucky Medal.  It skipped off one turtle's shell and ricocheted off a crab's waving claw, rolled for an eternity, slowly toward the middle- and encountered unexpected reptile.

It was sheer luck that someone had dropped a pebble into the fountain sometime, and it happened to fall in the right space.  Maybe years earlier, and if the Lucky Fountain or fate or anything else held true, this was probably the pebble's purpose.  The Medal struck the stone and skipped, then landed on the turtle's shell.  The turtle didn't seem to notice, wandering aimlessly around the fountain, until it stopped at the centre, turned its head, and angled just enough for the coin to fall off.

It landed with a determined _clink in the precise centre of the rings.  The dragon head extended, and with a metallic ringing, a sword fell out.  It had a sense of drama, apparently, because the blade stabbed into the low stone platform and stood upright.  Garet pulled it out without much trouble, and the handle felt somehow unnaturally cold._

"Nice sword," he commented.

"Assassin Blade," Ember reported.  "A weapon with some sort of dark Psynergy that can drag a person near to death in a single strike.  Very dangerous."

"Ouch!" yelped Garet, who had only tried to feel the side of the scimitar and somehow managed to cut himself.  "I can tell.  But it's only fair after that thing handed over a bag for the last one."

"Um…" said Ember, "this looks more like a Ninja Hood to me."

"A Ninja Hood?" repeated Garet, who was starting to realise that it wasn't a great idea to wave around a mystical scimitar of death in the city square of Tolbi.

"Yeah.  Like a bag you can wear.  Now, is that all the Lucky Medals?"

"I think so."

"Good.  Put that thing away and follow me, there's still more stuff to do."

"Like what?"

"Ever heard of a slot machine?"

Isaac had to admit that he was impressed by how well the Djinn worked together.  The Jupiter Djinn found the dead ends quickly, while Sap and Vine carefully led Isaac and Ivan through the rocky tunnels without serious injury.  Even monsters seemed to dislike the intense shadows, for they met none.

It wasn't a great deal further into the strange cavern that Isaac tripped over something and crashed onto the gritty stone heavily.  "Hey, what happened to warning us?" he asked, rubbing his sore palms.

"I would have.  Not my fault if you can't keep track of your own feet," said Vine.

The Adepts and Djinn froze as a strange moaning filled the cavern.  Isaac and Ivan whirled around, trying to find the source, but they could see no more here than any other part of the pitch-black cavern.  This didn't bother them, but it freaked the heck out of the Djinn, who couldn't see anything either, and darkness didn't stop them.

"Who's there?" asked an exhausted voice.  "Is anyone there?"

"Isaac, check this out," said Ivan, who was startled to notice that in the midst of shadows, he _could_ see something.  It was very faint, a suggestion of light more than anything real, and it was wrapped around a shape on the floor like ethereal gauze.

"What is it?" asked Isaac, who had stood up fully and smacked into a stalactite in this lower passage.

"A figure wrapped in Psynergetic light," murmured Ivan.

"You know what Psynergy is?" croaked the shape.  "Who are you?"

"Isaac of Vale," answered the Venus Adept.

"Ivan of Kalay," the Jupiter Adept followed.

"Vale?  Kalay?  So far away, and knowing the secret of Psynergy…"

"Who are you?" asked Isaac, bent into a near L shape, even though it wasn't necessary.  In answer he got nothing but groans of pain.  "What's happened to you?  And why-"

"I have not the strength to speak for long," rasped the hidden figure.  "I will die, likely in less than an hour, unless you can find my draught deeper in Altmiller Cave.  I must ask you to go…"

"Y'think we can trust him?" asked Ivan in a whisper.

"The guy sounds more than half-dead already, Ivan.  We can't just leave him here," replied Isaac.  "We wouldn't be any better than Saturos or Menardi."

"I hope we beat them, just so you can't rationalize everything with a reference to madmen.  And a madwoman, of course," said Ivan, but wouldn't have left someone to die anyway, even with unknown danger involved.

"Naturally, we'll help," said Isaac, louder.

"Thank you," the nearly-invisible figure wheezed.  "In the lowest level of this cave is a chamber with a seal on it.  There are rocks in the floor, five of them."  He took a moment to cough.  "Turn the ones on the farthest left and right, and lights will appear on the wall.  You must then turn the rocks that correspond to the topmost lights, but the colour of the stone is hidden-"  The figure lapsed into coughing again, and was silent.

"…Did he just die?" asked Ivan, a little worried.

"I think he's just too weak to speak," said Isaac, daring to reach out and touch the oddly 'cloaked' old man.  Yes, he was definitely breathing, if shallowly.  "We'd better be fast, then."

"We don't know which rocks are which.  For that matter, the whole story seems a bit odd-"

"Ivan, it's coming from an invisible guy.  Of course it's odd.  That's how you can tell it's true.  Now let's move quickly.  If we stick around to ask him more about the rocks, he probably _will_ die in front of us."

"You're so cheerful underground," said Ivan sarcastically, but followed Sap after Isaac and Vine.

The lack of monsters still seemed too good to be true in Isaac's opinion, but now he wasn't going to question their luck.  But after several minutes more of stumbling through the dark, he realised that there was a very good reason for there to be no monsters, more than the darkness.

The encounter with an invisible man asking for their help had driven much of the earlier argument between the Djinn out of his head, but suddenly the starting point for it rushed back as Isaac reached the bottom of strange, spiral stairs and entered a bright room.  It was filled with torches, stone pillars, some of which had fallen, and from his view, was very rapidly filling with Djinni.

Djinn aren't afraid of the dark.  To the right people they're a good reason to fear it, though.

"Embodiment of Venus!" she screamed, smashing headfirst into Isaac at stomach height.  "Though I am trapped below a thousand tons of stone, do not think me easy prey!  Squall fears no Adept, however loathsome and conniving your scheme may be!"

"Ivan, help, this Djinni's lost it!" shouted Isaac, blinking painfully in the sudden brightness and sudden tackle.

"You shall not bring reinforcements, I assure you!" said Squall, focused, and blasted the wall above the opening to the stairs with Plasma.  The rock superheated and shattered, collapsing in a cloud of dust and wreckage that cut Ivan off.  Isaac was trapped, flat on his back, in a room with a psychotic Jupiter Djinni that had it in for him.  Things were looking bad.

"_Tornado!_" shouted Squall, and twin twisters, occasionally sparking with minor lightning, dashed toward the Venus Adept.  Isaac was picked up by one, thrown into the other, and swung around in the grip of the wind for several moments before being dropped to the dusty floor again.

"That was just mean," he groaned, wishing that the room would stop spinning, and really hoping that the dozen Jupiter Djinn he saw perhaps three metres away were just dizziness.  It was less gratifying than he had hoped when they resolved into a single Djinni who barrelled into him again at near-sonic speeds.

"You are strong indeed, Venus Adept, but not stronger than a Djinni of Jupiter!"

"No?" asked Flint, appearing nearby.  "How about with us on his side?"

"…Venus Djinni," muttered Squall, startled.  "…Adept, you have taken hostage Djinn?!  This shall not go unpunished!"

"Oh, stop it with the bravado!" exclaimed Isaac, and drew his sword.  "_Unleash Sap!"  Isaac struck, knowing that no blade could cut a Djinni, but that the strike would still weaken her, and Sap would restore his own health from Squall's._

"_Storm Ray!_" called the Djinni, but with a countering '_Unleash Granite!_' Isaac deflected much of the lightning's damaging strike.

"I'd really rather not beat you too senseless," Isaac pointed out.

"You shall breathe freely only when I am dead, Adept!"

"Well, at least it won't come to that.  _Unleash Ground!_"  Isaac called on his newest Djinni, who leapt into being in the usual spirit-like fashion and let loose charges of Venus Psynergy that were drawn to Squall.  They struck in a mass of sparking, and suddenly Squall found she could not move, but was paralysed by intense gravity.  "_Unleash __Flint__!"  A second strike, unavoidable, smote Squall heavily, and she collapsed as Ground's temporary effect wore off._

"Very well, Adept," she gasped.  "You are victorious through your evil ways.  Slay me."

"No thanks," said Isaac.  "Better things to do."  He turned back to the wreckage and dug through a pocket, finding the Lift Gem.  He focused Psynergy on it, and then from it, taking hold of the fallen stones with Psynergy hands and lifting it away.  Ivan came through, dusty but unharmed.

"Hey, you found the Djinni!" he said, happily.  "Who are you, then?"

"Who are _you_?" asked Squall.  "I see on you the blessing of Jupiter… could it be…  Adept!"

"Yes?" asked Isaac, mildly.

"Why came you here?"

"Looking for some invisible guy's draught," he replied, arms crossed.  "Not a fight."

"I see.  You two are Adepts and adventurers.  Very well.  Name yourself, Jupiter Adept."

"Um…  I'm Ivan."

"**Squall Allies with Ivan!**"  The Jupiter Djinni spun and leapt into the air, turning into a comet of purple light that circled around Ivan and then dove into his chest.  A moment later, Squall reappeared.  On Ivan's head.

"I think it's built into them.  Heads = good places to sit," Isaac suggested.  Squall seemed uncertain, or preoccupied, as though she was reading through an invisible book filled with adventures and surprises beyond the contents of most lives.

"The Elemental Stars," she said at last.  "All right, then.  You think you can take these two Mars Adept upstarts, do you?"

"You sound different," Ivan noted.

"Like spindleshanks over there said.  Djinni bravado."

"Spindle-_what_?" repeated Isaac.

"Yeah, we do," answered Ivan, ignoring his friend.

"I'm up for it, then," said Squall, and grinned indefinably.  "Onward to glory and victory!"

"Thanks for the help, Ground," said Isaac, letting Ivan take the lead as they continued delving into the cave.  "That was nasty."

"Battles with Djinn always are," said Ground, simply.

The tunnels returned to absolute darkness for a time, but not long after that they entered another, much smaller chamber that was properly lit with a couple of torches, and had five rocks on the floor.  When the stones on either end were rotated, which they did with surprising ease, five lights grew on the wall, and it wasn't hard to see that they were created by Psynergy.

"I really want to know who's back there now," said Isaac as the pentagon of lights spun.

"Okay, so we spin the green rock.  Um… which one's green, then?" asked Ivan.

"I would know?"

"You're the resident Venus Adept."

"These rocks are, in fact, the colours of the lights, are they?" asked Squall.

"Yeah, that's the idea.  But it's hidden, so we'll have to guess…" muttered Isaac.

"Unless I'm way off fortress here, doesn't Ivan have Psynergy to deal with this sort of situation?"

Isaac and Ivan stared at each other for a moment.  "Well, that should have been pretty obvious," said Ivan.  "_Reveal!"  To Ivan's sight, the world around him turned to black and white, except for things with Psynergy in them, like Isaac, Squall, the lights on the wall… and the rocks, which were now vivid blue, green, white, yellow, and red.  "Oh yeah."_

"Although you just tried to kill me, I think I like you, Squall," Isaac commented while Ivan started spinning rocks all over the place while the lights on the wall rotated too.  After the fourth twist, the lights spiralled together on the wall and flared brighter, then vanished, leaving only a door.

"Done.  Let's get that draught and find out what's with the invisible old guy," said Ivan.

                Garet stood in front of the Lucky Dice table and wondered, frantically, if he could escape without losing much more.  Currently at the other end of the table was a man with a small, neat moustache, a mirthless grin and eyes, and most of what Garet had been carrying with him when he entered the building.

                "Um…" said Garet, tentatively.

                "Fine blade on this," said the man, looking closely at the Assassin's Blade, placed on top of the small heap of objects, as well as a good quantity of money in a coin purse.  He noticed Garet's expression.  "Oh, don't worry.  Losing streaks can't go forever.  Everyone starts off badly.  After thirty or forty rolls, though, it starts to pick up again."

                "Really?"

                "Never fails.  Every time.  'Specially with new players."

                "Well…" said Garet, thinking that if he could win back even some of the various things he had already lost and then escape with all his clothes, he would build a hundred temples to Mars and be a better person for the rest of his life.  "I guess…"

                The doors to the Lucky Dice Emporium slammed open, letting in a bright glare of sunlight behind a dark silhouette.  The cape swirled dramatically as the figure entered, slamming the door closed.  Never before had the man seen a girl with blue hair and white robes, covered in drying mud, stalk into Lucky Dice and attempt to forcibly remove a player, but there was a certain aura around Mia that told him immediately that stopping her was a losing move.

                "You great galumphing idiot, you think you can keep on gambling and win every time?  If Corona didn't have the sense to find me-"

                "Hold it," said the man, when Mia moved to retrieve Garet's lost bets, "you can drag him off if you want, but those were lost fair and square.  They stay."

                "You didn't get them by skill, I know that much," said Mia, not stopping.  She handed several of the items over into Garet's unresisting arms, taking no notice of anyone else nearby.

                "I said," the moustached man went on, "that he lost 'em, and you're not taking anything anywhere."  Mia looked at him and wondered how long it would take to Frost a person to death.  "'Course," the ever-grinning man went on, "you're welcome to try to win some back."

                Mia paused, the Earth Shield in her hands, and thought.  Venus was strongest in battle, Mars was strongest in body, and Jupiter was strongest in mind, everyone knew those.  Where they went wrong was in thinking that Mercury's equivalent was healing.  It wasn't.

                It was luck.

                "Very well," she said slowly, putting the shield back down.  "How do you play this game?"

                This sort of statement is a red flag to anyone with enough brains to pick up on literary tradition, because traditions have to start somewhere, and reality is often seen as a good place for this.  Statements like 'how do you play this game' mean that a professional gambler is about to consider changing jobs to something less risky, like kraken wrestling.

                "Oh… thank you…" gasped the hidden man, and took the bottle.  The moment Isaac let go, the strange flask vanished, but he and Ivan could hear the sound of a long drink being taken, and then he stood.  The figure was unsteady for a moment, but then stepped out into the light of the nearest torch.  White static seems to crackle around him, and then, much as Isaac had expected, an old man appeared.

                "Who are you?" he asked.

                "An answer to that question would be long indeed.  For now, let it suffice to say that I am Lord Babi of Tolbi," he responded with a touch of pride.

                "Lord Babi?" repeated Ivan, remembering that Kelsey had mentioned the name.  "If you don't… _mind…"  Ivan raised a hand and cast Mind Read, quickly gathering a few pieces of information._

                "Users of Psynergy!  Are you… Lemurians?" asked Babi, eagerly.

                "Never heard of Lemurians.  Sorry," answered Isaac.  "Ivan?"

                "I don't know who Lemurians are, but yes, this is Lord Babi, and he's the person the Tolbi Guard have been looking for," Ivan reported.

                "I might have guessed.  I've been careless with the draught recently, trying to stretch things out too much, hoping I can find Lemuria again…"  Babi seemed to be talking more to himself than anything else, but looked back up a moment later.  "My thanks again for finding the draught."

                "Why is it so important?" asked Isaac, confused.

                "It extends his life," replied Ivan.

                "Yes!  A bit of a simplistic answer, but true enough."

                "How does it do that?" asked Isaac, feeling that everyone was keeping things from him.

                "Lord Babi!  Is that you?  My lord?" called voices from further back in the cavern.  The tunnel brightened as torch-bearing guards found the three.  "Lord Babi!  We have been worried!"

                "Yes, yes," said Babi, waving the guards off.  He looked back at Isaac and Ivan, and a strange light was in his eyes, an odd youth surrounded by ancient skin and white hair.  A fiery youth that had been rekindled by something, though Isaac knew not what.  "Fortunately, these two have already rescued me.  They will come with us, Captain Tesselin.  These boys and I have much to discuss back at my palace."

**[Author's Notes]**  I know it's been a while, but give me a break, I wrote Shining in the Darkness in between these last two chapters.  And now, before I can do Lost Age Redux, I must finish Tolbi Chapter.  There's only one part left, though, Colosso, and anyone who knows _A Knight's Tale_ should find it… amusing.  Credit to the muse Phoenix, as always, and credit to anyone who hits that little review button down there.  Go on.  It'll be fun.


	5. A Gallant's Tale

**Golden Sun Redux – Tolbi Chapter**

**Part Five: A Gallant's Tale**

                Babi had collapsed in his chair -though in reality it was more like the throne of Tolbi than anything so minor as a chair- and was now studying Isaac and Ivan intently.  His aide, Iodem, was rushing about, restoring order to the shaken palace and learning precisely how much chaos there had been during Babi's disappearance.  Apparently there had been quite a lot.

"Not Lemurians, yet users of Psynergy.  Great warriors, yet mere boys.  Who are you, Isaac of Vale and Ivan of Kalay?" he asked, but it might have been rhetorical.

"Adepts," Isaac replied.  It couldn't hurt to tell more if Babi already knew what Psynergy was.  "I'm a Venus Adept, tied to the power of the earth, and Ivan's a Jupiter Adept, aligned with air."

Babi nodded.  "Perhaps, then, they were all connected to the water…"  He was muttering to himself, but Ivan decided to be helpful.

"Mercury.  Mia is a Mercury Adept," he added.

"Healing powers too?"

"The best I've ever seen," said Ivan, thinking of the many injuries she had saved them all from.

"Mercury, then," Babi agreed.  "Very well.  You have never heard of Lemuria?"

"Not until about half an hour ago," Isaac replied.

"Strange.  Fascinating, as well.  They are not nearly so unique as I believed, perhaps.  Do you know what Mystic Draught is, then?" questioned Babi again, and though the fire that they had seen in him back at Altimiller Cave remained, the weariness of his age was taking hold too.

"Not a clue," Ivan answered brightly.

"It is the drink that has allowed me to reach the age I am," the patrician of Tolbi explained.

"How old are you, anyway?" asked Ivan.  Isaac went rigid and wondered if the fire he had seen in Babi was soon to be applied to stakes and upstart Adepts who angered city rulers.

"You have mortified your companion," commented Babi.  "But it is a fair question, Ivan of Kalay, and my tale would not seem nearly as interesting without an answer.  I am over a century and a half old."  Both the Adepts choked in surprise.  "I thought your reaction would be such."

_                He looks good for a corpse_, Granite commented inside Isaac's head.

                _Stitching's__ holding up well, added Sap.  __I'm assuming he's been embalmed already._

                _You two are disgusting, said Ground._

                _If he starts looking closely at your neck, run for it, suggested Flint._

                _Oh, be quiet, snapped Ground._

                Isaac did his best to maintain a poker face while Babi went on.  "Far out over the ocean is an island called Lemuria, where the people live for many centuries by drinking the spring water…"

* * *

                "Lunatic," said Ivan as they left Babi's chambers.

                "You think so?" asked Isaac.

                "Boy, the guy said he was a hundred and fifty years old," said Sap.

                "Look, I know you're all centuries old and everything, but is it really necessary to call me 'boy', especially when you yourselves look like…"

                "Look like what?" demanded all the Venus Djinn.

                "Well…" said Isaac, suddenly flailing for another topic.  "Anyway, he did know what Psynergy was before we even mentioned it.  He's not all crazy."

                "Yeah, he did, and did you see the look in his eyes?  Greed.  This Lord Babi's got a thing for power, and I'm not sure we were smart in telling him about our Psynergy," said Ivan.

                "We sure as heck aren't showing our faces until Tolbi's on the other side of the horizon," said Sap.

                "Can you imagine if he saw a Djinni?  He'd probably explode," Zephyr agreed.

                "Traveller!  Isaac!" called a voice from the halls behind them.  The Adepts turned, wondering if somehow Babi had discovered the existence of the Djinn or the like.  Instead, a black-haired and bearded man rushed after them, stopping only at a skid on the red carpet, which gathered beneath his feet.  "Lord Babi would like me to inform you that if you wish, Colosso is open to your participation."

                "It what?" asked Isaac, quite lost.

                "If you wish to participate in the final rounds of Colosso, you are welcome to join as a full champion, with an equal chance at victory," said the man, slower and patiently.

                "I don't think we've got time for this," said Ivan.

                "He also asked me to inform you," the man continued, now sounding a little unsure, "that Gondowan Passage has been closed to all but properly proven warriors."

                "That tricky ba-" Ivan started.

                "Babi, or rather, Lord Babi, certainly knows how to motivate," Isaac cut him off, brightly.  "All right.  How long do we have to prepare…"  Isaac trailed off.

                "Iodem," the man supplied.  "And the first of the three finals begins in not much more than an hour."  Isaac and Ivan looked at each other.  Even though Isaac didn't have Mind Read, a silent conversation passed between them.

                _We don't have time._

                _We don't have a choice._

                _You think he'll let us through if you lose?_

_                You think I'll lose?_

_                He just wants to see your Psynergy in action._

_                And then we can get moving again._

_                I suppose it doesn't hurt that you'll get to compete, either._

                "Where should I go once I'm ready?" Isaac asked.

                Garet, hauling a considerable quantity of equipment and a not-so-minor sack of coins, and Mia, still the absolute image of earth-encrusted authority, marched triumphantly out of the Lucky Dice Emporium and through the streets of Tolbi, searching for their friends.

                "That was pretty good," Garet admitted.  "Particularly the part when you bluffed four times in a row and then slapped down a… what was it?"

                "Glorious Revolution," Mia muttered.  "He took losing all his kings pretty hard, didn't he?"

                "Yeah, that…" Garet agreed, seeming far off.  "Do people play cards often in Imil?"

                "Every winter night," the Mercury Adept replied, grinning.

                "I should have known."

                "He might have felt better if he did, but if a guy's going to be that ruthless with someone so innocently moronic-"

                "Hey!"

                "-I hardly think it matters how he feels as he gets his just desserts," she finished.

                "I could go for just desserts.  I'd take anything- how long has it been since we got to eat?"

                "We don't know where Ivan and Isaac are, and you're thinking about food?" demanded Mia, looking sternly at Garet.  The fact that she looked like she had just crawled through the crust of the earth from some dark underworld was certainly a point in her favour, as far as being assertive went, but Garet thought quickly (he _was_ capable of it).

                "Mia, they're guys too.  If I'm thinking 'where's food' and I've been in town while they were adventuring all day, they're going to be hungry too," he pointed out.

                Mia considered this for a moment, and decided that it was bluffing, but it was dang good bluffing, and maybe true.  "Okay.  Then where _can we find food?"_

                "Practically anywhere, but all the markets are really crowded," said Fever from near-ground level.

                "Hey, where've you been?" Garet demanded.

                "Looking for you, kindling-brain," Fever shot back.  "You left me behind."

                Mia looked exasperated, but before Garet could defend himself, she spoke.  "How could I have forgotten about that?  Fizz!"

                "Aye, lady?" said the Mercury Djinni, appearing in her hair.

                "Where are all the Venus and Jupiter Djinn in this city?" Mia asked.

                "I've told you before, it's really hard to find Djinn that aren't allied… oh, wait.  You mean Isaac and Ivan's?  They're up at the palace."

                "Gah…" Isaac gurgled, staring at the long, laden table.

                "Gahah…" Ivan agreed, trying not to drool.  The entrants to Colosso were fed well.

                "_I can smell that!" shouted a voice at least two floors below them, and a tremendous pounding of feet up stairs and along corridors followed, until Garet burst into the room between them._

                "All of you are in Colosso?" asked an attendant, disbelievingly.

                "Garet, where are you?" another voice called, female, yet nothing like soft.  A few moments later, Mia entered as well.  "Knew it.  I just followed the trail of inch-deep footprints in the carpet."

                "Now I'm certain you're not supposed to be here," said the attendant, who had the sort of unpleasant, supposedly-formal-but-more-like-congested voice that was usually found among those who have high rank for no reason except to prove that rank doesn't say much about intelligence (or, for that matter, fashion sense, he had ruffs at his wrists that could cushion a meteor strike).  "Women aren't allowed in Colosso."

                "Why not?" Mia demanded.

                The attendant looked over her much-travelled clothes, particularly the remains of the battle with Hail, which fit Mia easily into the rank of 'civilian', or perhaps 'peasant'.  "The trials are far too much for women.  It addles their brains.  They would be fainting all over the place."

                "I'm not even going to bother," she declared.  "Ivan, Isaac, let's go.  Garet, out of that chicken."

                "The stuffing is the best part…" he complained, not withdrawing his hand.

                "Actually, Mia," said Isaac, his face as red as Fever, "I've agreed to compete in Colosso."

                "You what?" asked Mia, deadpan.  Isaac stuttered into a repetition, but Mia waved him to be silent.  "I heard you.  Somehow I'm not surprised."  She noticed his sudden hurt expression.  "I mean, if they're so intent on the entrants being masculine-"

                "Spare us," muttered Spritz.

                "Have all the finalists gone to prepare?" asked another attendant, walking in.  He caught sight of the Adepts.  "What are you doing here?"

                "I'm participating in Colosso," Isaac replied.

                "That's ludicrous," said the attendant instantly.  "We've reached the finals."

                "Really?  Oh.  Babi'll be disappointed about that," said Ivan, casually.

                "…Babi?" the attendant repeated.

                "These are the other contestants," said the attendant, leading Isaac into the preparation chamber.  "They all passed the early trials of Colosso where others failed to match their strength and prowess."  He looked Isaac up and down.  "You don't exactly look like the usual type we get in here, but if Babi insists… I just hope you have a good doctor."

                "Best in the world," Isaac replied.  "But I don't intend to need any patching up afterwards."

                "You may find that your fellow contestants have other fates in mind for you.  Not all of them standing upright.  In fact, very few.  Frequently leaking important fluids."

                "Do people die in Colosso?" asked Isaac.

                "No.  But it's up to the contestants when the final battle ends.  They either have to declare their surrender or be… unable to declare it."

                "Like dead?"

                "No!  Unconscious, perhaps."

                "This sounds ugly."

                Garet, Ivan, and Mia were in the crowd.  They had been given good places to watch from, admittedly, but they were all still wondering what was going to happen.  Mia was especially preoccupied with the log-filled pools and entire sections that appeared to have been stolen from a Contraptions That Cause People To Fall From A Great Height convention.

                "This looks ugly," she decided.

                "Isaac can handle it," Ivan stated.  "Besides, he's got Psynergetic equipment.  What could possibly get through that?"

                "I've got to what?!" Isaac demanded.

                "Hand over all of your equipment.  Only Colosso-approved items are allowed," said the attendant.  "The ones you gather during the trials."

                "I'm not looking forward to this," the Venus Adept mumbled.

                _I wonder if we'd count as equipment, Flint remarked.  Isaac grinned, but tried not to show it._

                Babi shook off Iodem's attention.  "I'm fine now, stop fussing."  This didn't do much, Iodem was well-paid for his job and took a measure of pride in being worth every coin.  And he wasn't the type to bother with introspection like "Maybe Babi would actually prefer not being nagged the rest of the way to death."

                The ruler of Tolbi moved on, trying to pretend he didn't have a forty-year-old man following him around like his mother.  The only difference coming to mind was that his mother didn't have a small contingent of heavily armed bodyguards to make sure he ate his broccoli.

                Eventually Babi managed to reach his favourite balcony on the eastern wing, the one that looked out from the highest level of the Colosso arena.  It was a huge place, and four obstacle courses had been built across the long field, each one split into two halves that met at the centre, where a small battleground had been prepared.

                Of all the buildings in Tolbi whose design he had taken from the Lemurians, Babi prized his arena the most, even greater than the Lucky Spring.  He looked out over the contest grounds, and is gaze swept around the gathered crowds from all over Angara, even some from Gondowan.

                At a moment like this, riding the waves of the cheering crowd, Babi couldn't imagine how he could ever die.

                He held out a hand, and Iodem placed in its newly-strengthened grip the Rod of Commencement.  "The champions are ready, milord Babi."

                "Tell me of them," he commanded, not taking his eyes away from the vast roaring crowds.

                "The favourites are Azart, Satrage, Navampa, and Ezekiel the Destroyer."

                "…_What?"_

                "Well, there's always one, milord."

                "The fourth is doomed, I have no doubt; keep a doctor ready near him until he's outside the city.  What about the others?"

                "Not much hope for them, your lordship.  The one called Morgan -black armor- was, well…"

                "He wasn't the one up being sick all last night?"  Babi recalled the actual events of last night, which had been big in the disturbing-scratchy-footstep-sounds department.  He _hated_ that cave.  "The night before last, rather."

                "That's right."

                "What do they say about my chosen champion at the betting booths?"

                "I'm not sure they've heard of him, milord."

                Babi grinned.  "Iodem, this is going to be a Colosso unlike any other."

                Isaac stood ready in position alongside the other Colosso warriors, but he had the feeling that if they hadn't been worried about disqualification, they'd have been doing their best to grind him into the bricks of the nearest wall.  The black armoured one -Isaac thought his name was Morgan- kept glaring at him with what might have been intense hatred behind the helmet's faceplate.

                "Champions ready!" called a voice down the long tunnel they faced.

                Outside, Babi raised the rod to the sky and pulled a trailing cord.  The upper half of the rod launched into the sky and exploded, the finest chrysanthemum firework opening over the crowd in waves of red and blue.

                "To your positions!" the voice shouted to Isaac and the other champions.  They dashed ahead down the hall and burst out into the arena, where they were greeted by a deafening cheer.  Isaac took a moment to be dazed by the sudden bright sunlight and flood of sound, but he was encouraged to keep moving by a clip along the back of the head from Morgan, who rushed off toward his own trial.

                "Jenna does that," Isaac muttered, and kept going.

                "Can you see him?" Garet called to the others, barely heard over the rest of the spectators.

                "If I could see him, I'd have said so already," Mia replied, annoyed by just about everything at that moment.

                "I can mostly see a lot of torsos," said Ivan, also not in a great mood.  "I was wrong, Garet, you aren't freakishly tall.  It's everything _else that makes you freakish."_

                Garet ignored Ivan.  "There he is!" the Mars Adept announced, and indeed, Isaac had just walked up to the start of his first trial.  He looked slightly unwell.  After all, he was facing seven other finalists, all huge warriors who had fought in Colosso before, and would again.  Men who knew what they were doing, who had been getting ready for this all year long.

                Men who were roughly a foot taller than him.  And those were the short ones.

                _Gong.  Tolbi soldiers were on the uppermost level of the arena, at the back, ringing a massive gong.  __Gong.  That was two.  One more to go…  _Gong_.  And then the torch was put to the fuse, and a cannon blast signalled the beginning of the finals.  Isaac was halfway into thinking 'Babi's got a thing for really loud noises' when the warrior took over.  He ran._

                "That's amazing," Ivan remarked, watching Isaac dash past a mobile column, one that he probably could have used as a stepping stone, and take a flying leap over a space twice as wide as he should have been capable of.  The Venus Adept hit the edge of the other side with his ribs, arms flat out on the ground.  His flailing boots found purchase, but he was moving so fast it was more like shoplifting.  Isaac rose up the wall and ran on.

                The next half hour was a blur to Isaac, in later memory.  He had coherent flashes, but he was being driven by the sort of mind that usually only came alive in battle, seeing things and reacting before he had time to bother with second thoughts like 'is there a faster way' or 'am I going to survive this'.

                He remembered leaping over a huge pipe and pressing his back against the wall, sending the massive thing rolling with his feet so that it crashed into a gap and let water keep flowing, flipping mechanisms and opening the way to move forward.

                He remembered a bridge that continually broke and sealed again in several places, so that it wasn't safe to slow down.  This wasn't really a problem for him.  Garet would have sworn that at one point the bridge opened right below Isaac and he didn't so much as falter.

                And he remembered a battlefield, armed only with the most basic of equipment, plus a strong iron shield, because Isaac reached the centre first and, during the long wait for the other to catch up, was granted the stronger of the two items.

                The battle wasn't long, and so there are only a few scattered images of it in Isaac's memory, mostly of a shocked face behind a helmet and the sound of his short sword clashing against armor.  The other finalist, Azart, was dropped in moments, but the warrior did not leave Isaac, and he rushed on to the next trial path.

                There were a few moments while Isaac waited for his next opponent, he calmed just slightly.  The warrior, while still alert, subsided and allowed Isaac to think more clearly.  He looked up, seeing Garet, Mia, and Ivan in the crowd, waving to him.  The rest of the crowd was cheering too, and it occurred to Isaac that, as long as he was competing, he might as well give the crowd what they were there for.

                "Did that scare either of you?" asked Mia, not showing how unnerved the first trial had made her in the least.

                "Like hell," Garet replied, a huge, not perfectly real grin on his face.  "I hate it when he does that."

                The second round was better, more like watching a tiger in the forest than a maniac on a rooftop.  A performing tiger, too.  Isaac entered a maze, and quickly decided that the winning solution didn't include the ground.  He leapt against one wall, pushed off, and rebounded onto another, climbing to its top.

                "Oh dear Mars," said Garet, hands over his eyes.

                "Wow!" Ivan exclaimed.

                "What?"

                "He just did a cartwheel along the edge!"

                _Splunsch__!_

                "What was that?"

                "That was the edge running out," Mia replied.  "It's okay, he landed in a big pool."

                "A pool?" Garet repeated.

                "Yeah.  So he's fine," said Ivan.

                "This is the pool we saw earlier with the moving platforms and such?"

                "Uh-oh."

                "Oh, Mars help him…"

                Isaac broke the surface and gasped for breath.  The water was pleasant enough, and without his usual plate mail, swimming to the other side would be a breeze, or a tide or a current or something.  Fortunately, the warrior instincts hadn't entirely sunk, either.  He turned just in time to see one of the platforms heading coming toward him, and a sudden twist confirmed the fact that Isaac was about to get turned into the new design on the wall.  He yelped and dove under.

                "It's fine," Ivan reported after a few moments.  "He's climbing out on the other side."

                "I'm not looking until he's done with the water."

                "He _is done with the water," Mia assured Garet._

                "Good."

                _Splosh__!_

                "Just not the log-rolling."

                "He shouldn't have tried to do it backwards."

                "Mars help us _all…"_

                Soaking wet, Isaac took a moment to pose heroically at the top of the steps before turning and running onto the battlefield -_clonk_- where he ran right into Satrage, who was now wearing some well-crafted and sturdy armor.

                "It's faster if you don't drown twice on the way," the tall warrior told Isaac.  "Now it's time for some payback.  I'm not sure what kind of tricks you used, but Azart's a buddy of mine, and-"

                Isaac didn't bother to wait for Satrage to finish talking, he simply ran into the man again with a full body tackle, this time leading the way with his iron shield.  The surprise attack evened things for the first few moments of battle, while Isaac was on the offensive, but being able to shrug off the minor strikes so easily led to a turnaround soon after.  They traded blows for a while, blocking when possible (or when convenient, in Satrage's case).  The Venus Adept took a few strikes, and retreated to concentrate.

                Babi edged forward in his seat.  This was exactly what he had been hoping for…

                And Isaac was acting exactly the way he was supposed to.  He didn't bother to put his thoughts into words, but if he had, they would have been something like 'to Hail with that, I'm an Adept'.

                "_Quake Sphere!"  No one in the crowd ever quite agreed on what happened, some said it was a freak accident, some said the strange warrior's sheer strength made the very earth tremble.  Either way, Satrage was thrown into the air and dropped unceremoniously back down, making a metallic sound like a kitchen stood on one end._

                Isaac followed it up with a strike to the side of his helmet that would likely never stop echoing in Satrage's head, and that battle ended.

                "Wonderful!" Babi shouted, leaping to his feet and applauding.

                "Sir?" said Iodem, carefully.

                "Did you see that?  The light, that energy- it was incredible!"

                "Sir?"

                "Stop saying 'sir', like that.  I am well aware that 'sir' in that tone means 'whatever few marbles this old man once had have come unscrewed'."

                "Not at all, sir.  And I certainly did not attempt to convey in that sentence any sort of scepticism on the subject of unscrewable marbles."

                "I shall make it all clear to you later, Iodem.  For now… are we already at the last trial?"

                "Yes sir.  Your chosen warrior versus… my goodness.  It's Morgan."

                "Morgan?  The one who didn't want to show up for dinner because he was too nauseous from fright?" asked Babi, bewildered.

                "That's right, sir.  He's been fighting like a… a…  well, I have various reports making references to tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, and one mentioning a cage full of wet tigers and a man whistling at a painfully high pitch while covering himself in barbecue sauce."

                "Promote that one.  I approve of detailed reporting."

                Isaac stood now at the beginning of the final course.  He wasn't especially surprised, really.  He had come in second for sure, and could even win Colosso.  So much for his fears at the start.  But now some more rational fears were coming up, including 'I don't think it should hurt when I breathe' and 'either the wall or myself is wobbling, which one is it?'

                "Isaac doesn't look so good," Ivan noted.

                "Isaac looks like he's going to be sick," Mia corrected, getting concerned.

                "I don't think he's going to be able to make it through this next one," Garet said.

                "Don't say things like that!  I'm sure he'll be fine," said Mia.

                "I hope so.  It's not like there's anything we can do to help," said Ivan.  He noticed a sudden stillness behind him, and when he turned around, Garet and Mia were staring at each other, silently and intently.  They didn't even bother with 'are you thinking what I'm thinking'.

                "On it," Mia declared.

                "I'll take the kid," Garet agreed, grabbed Ivan by the arm, and dragged him through the crowd.

                Isaac tried to stand up straight, stumbled, and fell back against the wall.  He called up Cure Well, but even though the Psynergy healed his injuries, it left him even more exhausted.  And now he had to rush through another obstacle course to fight the best of the other warriors.  The signal would come any moment now, he had to be ready…

                "Good people of Tolbi!" called a familiar voice.  "I missed my introduction!"  There was a sort of confused mumbling among the crowd at this proclamation, but they seemed interested.  And Isaac had placed the voice.  He looked about for the source.

                "Mia, your timing is incredible," the Venus Adept mumbled.

                She stood atop a pillar at the side of the central battlefield that was Isaac's next goal, arms wide.  "For although there have been a great many champions seen in this place on this day, there is one greater than all others, and he is not known to you.  His travels have been long, but they have led to this place, and so do I come with him to speak of his deeds."

                "This is wrong, isn't it?" said Ivan, handing Garet the Orb of Force.

                "Well, there's wrong and there's Wrong, really, and this isn't the one with the capital," Garet replied, sending a ghostly fist flying from his own.  "Pretend you're on a mission from Jupiter."

                "When first I met him, it was in the far north, in the land of Imil, where I witnessed this knight walking across water, on a quest to open a holy fountain and end a terrible sickness," Mia went on.

                "Well, that's one way of putting it," said Ivan, focusing his Psynergy.  "Another way would be to say that since we failed to stop them from lightning Mercury, we got the Water of Hermes flowing by accident."

                "Again I saw him in the forest realm of Kolima, where his pure heart resisted the glamour of a vengeful spirit and broke the curse that had been placed on the sacred guardian tree."

                "First, she didn't see that, it happened the first time through the forest; second, 'again' is stretching it, 'cause she saw him all the way there, too," Garet pointed out, but went silent when he was too close.  The man working the machine was focused on Mia, and didn't even notice when Garet cast Halt.

                "On the Karagol Sea, he saved a ship from a terrible beast, a kraken from the depths of the waters, and did not relent until the monstrous creature was felled," Mia whispered.  And she could, because the entire colosseum had fallen silent listening to her.

                "Hey, _I did that!" Garet protested._

                "Done!" Ivan called quietly from the crowd.

                "People of Tolbi!" Mia shouted to the sky.  "I give you the performer of miracles, the breaker of curses, the protector of mariner sanctity, _Sir Isaac of Vale!"  Mia was rewarded with an explosion of cheering over which no one heard her exclamation of "Mercury, I'm good!"_

                And then the signal was given.  Isaac had taken his moments of rest thankfully, and was prepared for the final run as much as he was going to be.  Except that as he began, he couldn't help thinking…

                _Is it supposed to be this easy?_

                Because, really, it looked like someone had taken all the really hard parts and fixed them before he got there.  This was supposed to be the greatest test of skill at Colosso, but as he hopped along a shortcut on a stone pillar maze, Isaac noticed deep tracks in the dust as though they had been moved around.  Or possibly Moved around.

                The next section was a long treadmill, and Isaac should have had to run at quite a speed to make it across, but the entire thing simply seemed to be twitching back and forth without doing much.  If he had noticed the large block of wood jammed in the gears, he might have taken some time to thank his friends, but he was already across.

                On the one they had called the Leap of Faith, where a large stone pillar was supposed to force him to scale the wall and then choose a chute to drop back down onto the other path, Isaac pretended not to see that it had been Lifted a foot off the ground.  He crashed into the pillar and kept on running, using it as a bridge when it toppled and stuck.

                It _was all too easy.  Isaac couldn't imagine how his friends had helped, but he was thankful for the assistance, and took the steps up to the battle field with a deep, relieved breath.  At exactly the same moment, so did the black-armored Morgan._

                "How?" Isaac breathed.

                "How?" Morgan echoed, apparently shocked at Isaac's own performance.

                "A tie," the judicator announced.  "As such, neither champion's weapon shall be improved."

                Isaac and Morgan looked from the referee of Colosso back to each other, slowly.  "I think that means we start now," said Morgan, and Isaac noticed for the first time a strange quality to his voice.  It was deep and gruff, much like the others he had battled, but there was something strange about it…

                In the battle, there was no time to think of such things.  Isaac rolled to Morgan's side as he advanced with an overhead swing, and the Venus Adept came up from behind with surprised speed, scoring a trio of quick strikes to the other's back.

                Morgan spun quickly, blocked the fourth strike, and kicked out low, catching Isaac below the ribs with his boot.  Isaac rolled along the dusty ground, but when the bright sunlight above was blocked out by a dark shape waving a sword threateningly, he recovered quickly.

                "She's good," Mia remarked, watching the duel from the sidelines again.

                "I've never seen anyone keep up with Isaac before," said Garet, amazed.

                "Remember that Isaac's already battled a Jupiter Djinni and saved Babi today," Ivan pointed out.

                "…I feel like something's nagging at me," Garet muttered.

                Isaac and Morgan were on equal footing now, and the back-and-forth action was going to give the entire populace of Tolbi severe neck pains for a week.  The other Adepts, watching from the sidelines, were amazed.  They had never seen anyone match Isaac for this long, and they were even beginning to wonder if Morgan might come out with the victory.

                Babi looked like a four-year-old seeing Colosso for the first time.  He didn't know anything about the Djinn, but he could faintly see their strength behind Isaac's motions, an afterimage burning in the Psynergy spectrum, and it enthralled him.  Iodem, off to one side, was preparing a calming cup of tea and ironing a highly ornamented straitjacket.

                At last, Morgan turned the tide.  He dropped, caught Isaac's downward stroke with his own blade, and swept the Venus Adept's feet out from under him.

                "Surrender," he commanded.

                "Not today," Isaac replied, rolling backwards to his feet and quietly calling "_Unleash __Flint__!"  Hoping that the burst of light -for anyone could see Djinn power- would be taken for sunlight reflecting off the blade, Isaac struck, and with a terrific clash, Morgan's helmet split, and he dropped backwards._

                "She!"  Garet burst out, whirling on Mia.  "That's it!"  You said 'she'!"

                "You mean you can't tell?" asked Mia, startled.

                "No man is going to bring me down today," Isaac stated calmly, but Morgan only laughed.  It wasn't derisive, it was a long, hearty laugh, and in a different voice from before.  One rather higher, and much more natural.

                "Then isn't this convenient, Isaac of Vale?" asked Morgan, standing up, and the halves of her broken helmet clattered to the floor.  A wave of long, reddish-brown hair rolled out, and eyes the colour of lightning met Isaac's from a face that was definitely female.

                "What the…" Isaac mumbled, eyes wide.

                "You mean she's Kelsey's sister?!" Garet exclaimed, barely aware that something was happening on the battlefield.  "And you never told me?!"

                "Jenna," Ivan whispered, nudging Garet in the side.

                "Oh.  Um, right.  Well, you still could have said something," he finished.

                "She was obviously sneaking in.  I'm surprised you didn't catch on," said Mia.

                "How did you know?" asked Ivan.  "I can read minds and I didn't know!"

                "Isaac's in trouble," Mia observed, and he never remembered to ask again later.

                Morgan drew from her armor an item she had picked up during the earlier trials.  The familiar flame-yellow of an Oil Drop caught Isaac's attention, and he thought quickly.  If she dropped it, then he might have a chance while everything was obscured, but to avoid getting taken down by the blast… he'd have to be very, very lucky.

                She threw it.  He cast Ragnarok- though made of Psynergy, it too was visible to normal eyes.  The twin explosions rocked the battlefield, and when it all cleared, neither combatant stood.  Morgan and Isaac were both out cold.  It was officially declared a tie, for the first time known in Colosso history.  The prize was split evenly, and some rethinking was done on the idea of letting women compete.

                Morgan would wake up not too long after, in her sister's house with a fair share of coins and a king's ransom in fame.  Isaac would wake up too, in the palace, ready to go see Babi and continue the quest.

                But at that moment, the crowd's roar dulled in his mind as the world went dark, and new voices rang out in the deepening quiet, defiant cries over the sounds of battle.  He knew the voices, or perhaps simply would know them… it was impossible to tell who they might have been.

                _"I pray to Mercury, and the strength of the soothing water!"_

_                "I call on Jupiter, and the force of the speeding wind!"_

_                "I bring forth Mars, and the might of the raging fire!"_

_                "I fight for Venus, and the spirit of the living earth!"_

_                "We summon Sol, and the power of the shining light!"_

                When he awoke, hours later, he would not remember.

**[Author's Notes]**  It might not look much like it, but that's the end of the Tolbi Redux.  Now onto new projects… such as the third and probably final 'book', Lost Age Redux, which will cover the events surrounding Mars Lighthouse in a, shall we say, creative way.  Ja mata ne!  (And happy birthday to Vilya!)


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